LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No,. _.i_L 

8helf___13(lQn 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




c 1^003 



TWssi, 



42899 



Libwiry Of Con^ 

'WO Copies Received 
SEP 4 1900 

C«pynglit «itry 

SECOND copy; 

Oti'iVer^f to 

OROt« DIVISION, 
SEP 8 1900 



COHVKK.HT, 1000, BV W. P.. CONKEY COMPANY. 



7. 






CONTENTS. 



PAGE, 

In Memoriam ^ 5 

The Lover's Tale 1 19 

Ballads and other Poems. 

Dedication 175 

The First Quarrel ; 1 77 

Rizpah 184 

The Northern Cobbler 191 

The Revenge: a Ballad of the Fleet 200 

The Sisters 208 

The Village Wife ; or, the Entail 219 

In the Children's Hospital : Emmie 228 

Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice 233 

The Defense of Lucknow 234 

Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham 241 

Columbus 250 

The Voyage of Maeldune 260 



IN MEMORIAM A. H. H, 



OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII. 



Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove ; 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 

Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be: 
They are but broken lights of thee, 

And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
5 



6 IN MEMORIAM. 

We have but faith: we cannot know; 

For knowledge is of things we see ; 

And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness: let it grow. 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 

May make one music as before, 

But vaster. We are fools and slight ; 
We mock thee when we do not fear: 
But help thy foolish ones to bear; 

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. 

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; 

What seem'd my worth since I began; 

For merit lives from man to man, 
And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
I trust he lives in thee, and there 

I find him worthier to be loved. 

Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
Forgive them where they fail in truth 

And in thy wisdom make me wise. 

L 

I held it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

But who shall so forecast the years 
And find in loss a gain to match? 
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch 

The far-off interest of tears? 

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown 'd, 
Let darkness keep her raven gloss : 
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, 

To dance with death, to beat the ground, 

Than that the victor Hours should scorn 
The long result of love, and boast, 
*' Behold the man that loved and lost, 

But all he was is overworn." 

IL 

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 
That name the under-lying dead, 
Thy fibers net the dreamless head, 

Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 

The seasons bring the flower again, 

And bring the firstling to the flock ; 
And in the dusk of thee, the clock 

Beats out the little lives of men. 

O not for thee the glow, the bloom, 
Who changest not in any gale. 
Nor branding summer suns avail 

To touch thy thousand years of gloom : 



8 IN MEMORIAM. 

And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
I seem to fail from out my blood 

And grow incorporate into thee. 



III. 

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, 

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 
O sweet and bitter in a breath, 

What whispers from thy lying lip? 

•*The stars," she whispers, "blindly run; 

A web is wov'n across the sky; 

From out waste places comes a cry, 
And murmurs from the dying sun : 

**And all the phantom, Nature, stands — 
With all the music in her tone, 
A hollow echo of my own, — 

A hollow form with emoty hands." 

And shall I take a thing so blind. 

Embrace her as my natural good; 
Or crush her, like a vice of blood, 

Upon the threshold of the mind? 



IV. 

To Sleep I give my powers away ; 

My will is bondsman to the dark; 

I sit within a helmless bark. 
And with my heart I muse and say : 



IN MEMORIAM. 

O heart, how fares it with thee now, 

That thou should'st fail from thy desire 
Who scarcely darest to inquire, 

**What is it makes me beat so low?" 

Something it is which thou hast lost, 

Some pleasure from thine early years. 
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 

That grief hath shaken into frost ! 

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross 
All night below the darken'd eyes; 
With morning wakes the will, and cries, 

**Thou shalt not be the fool of loss." 



V. 



I sometimes hold it half a sin 

To put in words, the grief I feel; 
For words, like Nature, half reveal 

And half conceal the Soul within. 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain, 
A use in measured language lies: 
The sad mechanic exercise, 

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. 

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; 
But that large grief which these enfold 

Is given in outline and no more. 

2 In Memoriam 



10 IN MEMORIAM. 

VI. 

One writes, that "Other friends remain," 
That "Loss is common to the race" — 
And common is the commonplace, 

And vacant chaff well meant for grain. 

That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more: 
Too common! Never morning wore 

To evening, but some heart did break. 

O father, wheresoe'er thou be. 

Who pledgest now thy gallant son ; 
A shot, ere half thy draught be done. 

Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. 

O mother, praying God will save 

Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd. 
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 

Drops in his vast and wandering grave, 

Ye know no more than I who wrought 
At that last hour to please him well; 
Who mused on all I had to tell. 

And something written something thought; 

Expecting still his advent home; 
And ever met him on his way 
With wishes, thinking, "here to-day," 

Or "here to-morrow will he come. " 

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, 
That sittest ranging golden hair; 



IN MEMORIAM. 11 

And glad to find thyself so fair, 
Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! 

For now her father's chimney glows 

In expectation of a guest ; 

And thinking "this will please hfirr Best,** 
She takes a riband or a rose; 

For he will see them on to-night; 

And with the thought her color burns. 
And, having left the glass, she turns 

Once more to set a ringlet right ; 

And, even when she turn'd, the curse 
Had fallen, and her future Lord 
Was drown 'd in passing thro' the ford^ 

Or kiird in falling from his horse. 

O what to her shall be the end? 

And what to me remains of good? 

To her, perpetual maidenhood, 
And unto me no second friend. 

VII. 

Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street. 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 

So quickly, waiting for a hand. 

A hand that can be clasp'd no more — 
Behold me, for I cannot sleep. 
And like a guilty thing I creep 

At earliest morning to the door. 



12 IN MEMORIAM. 

He is not here; but far away 

The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling raia 

On the bald street breaks the blank day. 

VIII. 

A happy lover who has come 

To look on her that loves him well, 
Who 'lights and rings the gatev/ay bell, 

And learns her gone and far from home ; 

He saddens, all the magic light 

Dies off at once from bovver and hall. 
And all the place is dark, and all 

The chambers emptied of delight: 

So find I every pleasant spot 

In which Vv'e two were wont to meet. 
The field, the chamber and the street, 

For all is dark where tliou art not. 

Yet as that other, wandering there 
In those deserted walks, may find 
A flower beat with rain and wind, 

Which once she foster'd up with care; 

So seems it in my deep regret, 

my forsaken heart, with thee 
And this poor flower of poesy 

"Which little cared for fades not yet. 

But since it pleased a vanish 'd eye, 

1 go to plant it on his tomb, 



IN ME MORI AM. 13 

That if it can it there may bloom, 
Or dying, there at least may die. 

IX. 

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore 
Sailest the placid ocean-plains 
With my lost Arthur's loved remains, 

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. 

So draw him home to those that mourn 
In vain ; a favorable speed 
Ruffle thy mirror's mast, and lead 

Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. 

All night no ruder air perplex 

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 
As our pure love, thro' early light 

Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. 

Sphere all your lights around, above ; 

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the provv^ ; 

Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps nov/, 
My friend, the brother of my love ; 

My Arthur, whom I shall not see 
Till all my widow's race be run; 
Dear as the mother to the son. 

More than my brothers are to me. 

X. 

I hear the noise about thy keel ; 

I hear the bell struck in the ni'Mit: 



14 IN MEMORIAM. 

I see the cabin- window bright ; 
I see the sailor at the wheel. 

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, 

And travel'd men from foreign lands; 
And letters unto trembling hands; 

And, thy dark freight, a vanish 'd life. 

So bring him: we have idle dreams: 
This look of quiet flatters thus 
Our home-bred fancies: O to us, 

The fools of habit, sweeter seems 

To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains^ 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 

The chalice of the grapes of God ; 

Than if with thee the roaring wells 

Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine ; 
And hands so often clasp'd in mine, 

Should toss with tangle and with shells. 

XL 

Galm is the morn without a sound. 

Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 

And only thro' the faded leaf 
The chestnut pattering to the ground: 

Calm and deep peace on this high wold. 

And on these dews that drench the furze, 
And all the silvery gossamers 

That twinkle into green and gold: 



IN MEMORIAM. 15 

Calm and still light on yon great plain 

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
And crowded farms and lessening towers, 

To mingle with the bounding main : 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air. 

These leaves that redden to the fall; 
And in my heart, if calm at all, 

If any calm, a calm despair: 

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, 

And waves that sway themselves in rest, 
And dead calm in that noble breast 

Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 

XII. 

Lo, as a dove when up she springs 

To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, 
Some dolorous message knit below 

The wild pulsation of her wings; 

Like her I go ; I cannot stay ; 

I leave this mortal ark behind, 

A weight of nerves without a mind, 

And leave the cliffs, and haste away 

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, 

And reach the glow of southern skies, 
And see the sails at distance rise. 

And linger weeping on the marge, 

And saying: "Comes he thus, my friend? 
Is this the end of all my care?" 



16 IN ME MORI AM. 

And ciixle moaning- in the air: 
"Is this the end? Is this the end?" 

And forward dart again, and play 

About the prow, and back return 
To where the body sits, and learn 

That I have been an hour away. 

XIII. 

Tears of the widower, when he sees 
A late-lost form that sleep reveals, 
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels 

Her place is empty, fall like these ; 

Which weep a loss forever new, 

A void where heart on heart reposed ; 
And, where warm hands have prest and 
closed. 

Silence, till I be silent too. 

Which weep the comrade of my choice, 
An awful thought, a life removed, 
The human -hearted man I loved, 

A spirit, not a breathing voice. 

Come Time, and teach me, many years, 

I do not suffer in a dream; 

For now so strange do these things seem, 
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears; 

My fancies time to rise on wing, 

And glance about the approaching sails, 
As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, 

And not the burthen that they bring. 



IN MEMORIAM. 17 

XIV. 

If one should bring me this report, 

That thou hadst touch 'd the land to-day, 
And I went down unto the quay. 

And found tHee lying in the port; 

And standing, muffled round with woe, 
Should see thy passengers in rank 
Come stepping lightly down the plank, 

And beckoning unto those they know ; 

And if along with these should come 
The man I held as half-divine ; 
Should strike a sudden hand in mine. 

And ask a thousand things of home; 

And I should tell him all my pain, 

And how my life had droop'd of late 
And he should sorrow o'er my state 

And marvel what possessed my brain; 

And I perceived no touch of change. 
No hint of death in all his frame, 
But found him all in all the same, 

I should not feel it to be stransfe. 



XV. 

To-night the winds begin to rise 

And roar from yonder dropping day: 
The last red leaf is whirl' d awa}^ 

The rooks are blown about the skies; 



18 IN MEMORIAM. 

The forest crack 'd, the waters curl'd, 
The cattle huddled on the lea; 
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 

The sunbeam strikes along the world : 

And but for fancies, which aver 

That all thy motions gently pass 
Athwart a plan of molten glass, 

I scarce could brook the strain and stir 

That makes the barren branches loud ; 
And but for fear it is not so. 
The wild unrest that lives in woe 

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud 

That rises upward always higher, 

And onward drags a laboring breast, 
And topples round the dreary west, 

A looming bastion fringed with fire. 

XVI. 

What words are these have fall'n from me? 
Can calm despair and wild unrest 
Be tenants of a single breast. 

Or sorrow such a changeling be? 

Or doth she only seem to take 

The touch of change in calm or storm ; 

But knows no more of transient form 
In her deep self, than some dead lake 

That holds the shadow of a lark 

Hung in the shadow of a heaven? 



IN MEMORIAM. 19 

Or has the shock, so harshly given, 
Confused me like the unhappy bark 

That strikes by night a craggy shelf. 
And staggers blindly ere she sink? 
And stunn'd me from my power to think 

And all my knowledge of myself; 

And made me that delirious man 
Whose fancy fuses old and new, 
And flashes into false and true. 

And mingles all without a plan? 

XVII. 

Thou comest, much wept for : such a breeze 
Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer 
Was as the whisper of an air 

To breathe thee over lonely seas. 

For I in spirit saw thee move 

Thro' circles of the bounding sky. 
Week after week : the days go by : 

Come quick, thou bringest all I love. 

Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, 
My blessing, like a line of light. 
Is on the waters day and night, 

And like a beacon guards thee home. 

So may whatever tempest mars 

Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark; 
And balmy drops in summer dark 

Slide from the bosom of the stars. 



20 IN MEMORIAM. 

So kind an office hath been done, 

Such precious relics brought by thee ; 
The dust of him I shall not see 

Till all my widow 'd race be run. 



XVIII. 

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand 
Where he in English earth is laid, 
And from his ashes may be made 

The violet of his native land. 



'Tis little; but it looks in truth 

As if the quiet bones were blest 
Among familiar names to rest 

And in the places of his youth. 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, 
And come, whatever loves t© weep, 

And hear the ritual of the dead. 

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be, 
I, falling on his faithful heart. 
Would breathing thro' his lips impart 

The life that almost dies in me; 

That dies not, but endures with pain, 
And slowly forms the firmer mind, 
Treasuring the look it cannot find, 

The words that are not heard again 



IN MEMORIAM. 21 

XIX. 

The Danube to the Severn gave 

The darken'd heart that beat no more; 
They laid him by the pleasant shore, 

And in the hearing of the wave. 

There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea- water passes by, 
And hushes half the babbling Wye, 

And makes a silence in the hills. 

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, 
And hush'd my deepest grief of all, 
When fiU'd with tears that cannot fall, 

I brim with sorrow drowning song. 

The tide flows down, the wave again 

Is vocal in its wooded walls; 

My deeper anguish also falls, 
And I can speak a little then. 



XX. 



The lesser griefs that may be said, 

That breathe a thousand tender vows, 
Are but as servants in a house 

Where lies the master newly dead; 

Who speak their feeling as it is. 

And weep the fulness from the mind: 
"It will be hard," they say, "to find 

Another service such as this. ' ' 



22 IN MEMORIAM. 

My lighter moods are like to these, 
That out of words a comfort win ; 
But there are other griefs within, 

And tears that at their fountain freeze ; 

For by the hearth the children sit 

Cold in that atmosphere of Death, 
And scarce endure to draw the breath, 

Or like to noiseless phantoms flit: 

But open converse is there none, 
So much the vital spirits sink 
To see the vacant chair and think, 

*'How good! how kind! and he is gone.'* 



XXI. 

I sing to him that rests below. 

And, since the grasses round me wave, 
I take the grasses of the grave, 

And make them pipes whereon to blow. 

The traveler hears me now and then. 

And sometimes harshly will he speak : 
"This fellow would make weakness weak, 

And melt the waxen hearts of men." 

Another answers, "Let him be, 

He loves to make parade of pain 
That with his piping he may gain 

The praise that comes to constancy." 



IN MEMORIAM. 23 

A third is wroth: "Is this an hour 
For private sorrow's barren song", 
When more and more the people throng 

The chairs and thrones of civil power? 

"A time to sicken and to swoon, 

When Science reaches forth her arms 

To feel from world to world, and charms 

Her secret from the latest moon? 

Behold, ye speak an idle thing: 

Ye never knew the sacred dust: 
I do but sing because I must, 

And pipe but as the linnets sing : 

And one is glad; her note is gay, 

For now her little ones have ranged; 
And one is sad; her note is changed, 

Because her brood is stol'n away. 

XXII. 

The path by which we twain did go, 

Which led by tracks that pleased us well, 
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, 

From flower to flower, from snow to snow ; 

And we with singing cheer'd the way. 

And, crown'd with all the season lent. 
From April unto April went, 

And glad at heart from May to May: 

But where the path we walk'd began 
To slant the fifth autumnal slope. 



24 IN MEMORIAM. 

As we descended following Hope, 
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man; 

Who broke our fair companionship, 

And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
And wrapt thee formless in the fold, 

And dull'd the murmur on thy lip, 

And bore thee where I could not see 
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste, 
And think, that somewhere in the waste 

The Shadow sits and waits for me. 

XXIII. 

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, 

Or breaking into song by fits. 

Alone, alone, to where he sits, 
The Shadow cloak 'd from head to foot, 

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, 
I wander, often falling lame. 
And looking back to whence I came, 

Or on to where the pathway leads ; 

And crying, How changed from where it ran 
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb; 
But all the lavish hills would hum 

The murmur of a happy Pan : 

When each by turns was guide to each. 
And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 
And Thought leapt out to wed with 
Thought 

Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech; 



IN MEMORIAM. 25 

And all we met was fair and good, 

And all was good that Time could bring, 
And all the secret of the Spring 

Moved in the chambers of the blood ; 

And many an old philosophy 

On Argive heights divinely sang, 
And round us all the thicket rang 

To many a flute of Arcady. 



XXIV. 

And was the day of my delight 
As pure and perfect as I say? 
The very source and fount of Day 

Is dash'd with wandering isles of night. 

If all was good and fair we met, 

This earth had been the Paradise 
It never look'd to human eyes 

Since our first Sun arose and set. 

And is it that the haze of grief 

Makes former gladness loom so great? 

The lowness of the present state. 
That sets the past in this relief? 

Or that the past will always win 

A glory from its being far; 

And orb into the perfect star 
We saw not, when we moved therein? 



26 IN MEMORIAM. 

XXV. 

I know that this was Life, — the track 
Whereon with equal feet we fared; 
And then, as now, the day prepared 

The daily burden for the back. 

But this it was that made me move 
As light as carrier- birds in air; 
I loved the weight I had to bear, 

Because it needed help of Love: 

Nor could I weary, heart or limb, 

When mighty Love would cleave in twain 

The lading of a single pain, 
And part it, giving half to him. 

XXVI. 

Still onward winds the dreary way; 
I with it ; for I long to prove 
No lapse of moons can canker Love, 

Whatever fickle tongues may say. 

And if that eye which watches guilt 

And goodness, and hath power to see 
Within the green the moulder'd tree, 

And towers fall'n as soon as built — 

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee 
Or see (in Him is no before) 
In more of life true life no more 

And Love the indifference to be. 



IN MEMORIAM. 27 

Then might T find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas, 
That Shadow waiting with the keys, 

To shroud me from my proper scorn. 

XXVII. 

I envy not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage, 
The linnet born within the cage, 

That never knew the summer woods: 

I envy not the beast that takes 

His license in the field of time, 
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime, 

To whom a conscience never wakes; 

Nor, what may count itself as blest. 

The heart that never plighted troth 
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; 

Nor any want-begotten rest. 

I hold it true, whate'er befall; 

I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

XXVIII. 

The time draws near the birth of Christ: 
The moon is hid; the night is still; 
The Christmas bells from hill to hill 

Answer each other in the mist. 



28 IN MEMORIAM. 

Four voices of four hamlets round, 

From far and near, on mead and moor, 
Swell out and fall, as if a door 

Were shut between me and the sound: 

Each voice four changes on the wind, 
That now dilate, and now decrease, 
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, 

Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. 

This year I slept and woke with pain, 
I almost wish'd no more to wake. 
And that my hold on life would break 

Before I heard those bells again: 

But they my troubled spirit rule. 

For they controU'd me when a boy; 
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, 

The merry merry bells of Yule. 



XXIX. 

With such compelling cause to grieve 
As daily vexes household peace, 
And chains regret to his decease, 

How dare we keep our Christmas- eve; 

Which brings no more a welcome guest 
To enrich the threshold of the night 
With shower 'd largess of delight 

In dance and song and game and jest? 

Yet go, and while the holly boughs 
Entwine the cold baptismal font, 



IN MEMORIAM. 29 

Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, 
That guard the portals of the house; 

Old sisters of a day gone by, 

Gray nurses, loving nothing new; 
Why should they miss their yearly due 

Before their Time? They too will die. 

XXX. 

With trembling fingers did we weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth ; 
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, 

And sadly fell our Christmas-eve, 

At our old pastimes in the hall 

We gambol'd, making vain pretence 
Of gladness, with an awful sense 

Of one mute Shadow watching all. 

We paused : the winds were in the beech : 
We heard them sweep the winter land; 
And in a circle hand-in-hand 

Sat silent, looking each at each. 

Then echo-like our voices rang ; 

We sung, tho' every eye was dim, 
A merry song we sang with him 

Last year ; impetuously we sang : 

We ceased : a gentle feeling crept 

Upon us: surely rest is meet: 

'*They rest," we said, "their sleep is 
sweet," 
And silence follow 'd and we wept. 



30 IN MEMORIAM. 

Our voices took a higher range ; 

Once more we sang: '*They do not die 
Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 

Nor change to us, although they change ; 

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail 

With gather'd power, yet the same, 
Pierces the keen seraphic flame 

From orb, to orb, from veil to veil." 

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 

Draw forth the cheerful day from night : 
O Father, touch the east, and light 

The light that shone when Hope was born. 

XXXI. 

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 

And home to Mary's house return 'd, 
Was this demanded — if he yearn'd 

To hear her weeping by his grave? 

*' Where wert thou, brother, those four days?" 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surel}^ added praise to praise. 

From every house the neighbors met, 

The streets were fill'd with joyful sound, 
A solemn gladness even crown 'd 

The purple brows of Olivet. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 
The rest remaineth unreveal'd; 



IN MEMORIAM. 31 

He told it not; or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist. 

XXXII. 

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, 

Nor other thought her mind admits 
But, he was dead, and there he sits, 

And he that brought him back is there. 

Then one deep love doth supersede 
All other, when her ardent gaze 
Roves from the living brother's face, 

And rests upon the Life indeed. 

All subtle thought, all curious fears. 

Borne down by gladness so complete, 
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 

With costly spikenard and with tears. 

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
Whose loves in higher love endure; 
What souls possess themselves so pure, 

Or is their blessedness like theirs? 

XXXIII. 

O thou that after toil and storm 

Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air. 
Whose faith has center everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form, 

Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
Her early Heaven, her happy views; 



32 IN MEMORIAM. 

Nor thou with shadow 'd hint confuse 
A life that leads melodious days. 

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, 
Her hands are quicker unto good: 
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 

To which she links a truth divine! 

See thou, that countest reason ripe 
In holding by the law within, 
Thou fail not in a world of sin, 

And ev'n for want of such a type. 

XXXIV. 

My own dim life should teach me this. 
That life shall live for evermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core. 

And dust and ashes all that is: 

This round of green, this orb of flame, 
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks 
In some wild Poet, when he works 

Without a conscience or an aim. 

What then were God to such as I? 

'Twere hardly worth my v/hile to choose 
Of things all mortal, or to use 

A little patience ere I die ; 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace, 

Like birds the charming serpent draws, 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws 

Of vacant darkness and to cease. 



IN MEMORIAM. 33 

XXXV. 

Yet if some voice that man could trust 

Should murmur from the narrow house, 
"The cheeks drop in; the body bows; 

Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:" 

Might I not say? •*Yet even here, 

But for one hour, O Love, I strive 
To keep so sweet a thing alive:" 

But I should turn mine ears and hear 

The meanings of the homeless sea. 

The sound of streams that swift or slow 
Draw down Ionian hills, and sow 

The dust of continents to be; 

And Love would answer with a sigh, 
*'The sound of that forgetful shore 
Will change my sweetness more and more, 

Half-dead to know that I shall die." 

O me, what profits it to put 

An idle case? If Death were seen 
At first as Death, Love had not been. 

Or been in narrowest working shut, 

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods. 

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the 
grape, 
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 

3 In Memoriam 



34 IN MEMORIAM. 

XXXVI. 

Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin; 

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought; 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave. 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef. 

XXXVII. 

Urania speaks with darken 'd brow: 

"Thou pratest here where thou art least ; 
This faith has many a purer priest 

And many an abler voice than thou. 

"Go down beside thy native rill. 
On thy Parnassus set thy feet. 
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet 

About the ledges of the hill." 



IN MEMORIAM. 35 

And my Melpomene replies, 

A touch of shame upon her cheek: 
"1 am not worthy ev'n to speak 

Of thy prevailing mysteries ; 

"For I am but an earthly Muse, 
And owning but a little art 
To lull with song an aching heart, 

And render human love his dues; 

"But brooding on the dear one dead, 
And all he said of things divine 
(And dear to me as sacred wine 

To dying lips is all he said), 

"I murmur'd, as I came along, 

Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd 
And loiter'd in the master's field, 

And darken'd sanctities with 3ong. " 

XXXVIII. 

With weary steps I loiter on, 

Tho' always under alter'd skies 
The purple from the distance dies. 

My prospect and horizon gone. 

No joy the blowing season gives, 

The herald melodies of spring, 

But in the songs I love to sing 
A doubtful gleam of solace lives. 

If any care for what is here 

Survive in spirits render'd free, 



36 IN MEMORIAM. 

Then are these songs I sing of thee 
Not all ungrateful to thine ear. 

XXXIX. 

Old warder of these buried bones, 

And answering now my random stroke 
Witfti fruitful cloud and living smoke, 

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones 

And dippest toward the dreamless head. 
To thee too comes the golden hour 
When flower is feeling after flower; 

But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead, 

And darkening the dark graves of men, — 
What whisper'd from her lying lips? 
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 

And passes into gloom again. 

XL. 

Could we forget the widow'd hour 

And look on Spirits breathed away. 
As on a maiden in the day 

When first she wears her orange-flower! 

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise 
To take her latest leave of home, 
And hopes and light regrets that come 

Make April of her tender eyes; 

And doubtful joys the father move. 
And tears are on the mother's face. 



IN MEMORIAM. 37 

As parting with a long embrace 
She enters other realms of love; 

Her office there to rear, to teach, 
Becoming as is meet and fit 
A link among the days, to knit 

The generations each with each ; 

And, doubtless, unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In those great offices that suit 

The full-grown energies of heaven. 

Ay me, the difference I discern ! 

How often shall her old fireside 

Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, 

How often she herself return, 

And tell them all they would have told, 

And bring her babe, and make her boast, 
Till even those that miss'd her most 

Shall count new things as dear as old: 

But thou and I have shaken hands. 
Till growing winters lay me low; 
My paths are in the fields I know, 

And thine in undiscover'd lands. 

XLI. 

Thy spirit ere our fatal loss 

Did ever rise from high to higher; 

As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, 
As flies the lighter thro' the gross. 



38 IN MEMORIAM. 

But thou art turn'd to something strange, 
And I have lost the links that bound 
Thy changes; here upon the ground, 

No more partaker of thy change. 

Deep folly! yet that this could be — 

That I could wing my will with might 
To leap the grades of life and light, 

And flash at once, my friend, to thee. 

For tho' my nature rarely yields 

To that vague fear implied in death ; 
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath. 

The howlings from forgotten fields; 

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor 

An inner trouble I behold, 

A spectral doubt which makes me cold, 
That I shall be thy mate no more, 

Tho' following with an upward mind 

The wonders that have come to thee, 
Thro' all the secular to-be. 

But evermore a life behind. 

XLII. 

I vex my heart with fancies dim : 
He still outstript me in the race; 
It was but unity of place 

That made me dream I rank'd with him. 

And so may Place retain us still, 

And he the much-beloved again. 



IN MEMORIAM. 39 

A lord of large experience, train 
To riper growth the mind and will: 

And what delights can equal those 
That stir the spirit's inner deeps, 
When one that loves but knows not, reaps 

A truth from one that loves and knows? 

XLIII. 

If Sleep and Death be truly one, 
And every spirit's folded bloom 
Thro' all its intervital gloom 

In some long trance should slumber on; 

Unconscious of the sliding hour, 
Bare of the body, might it last, 
And silent traces of the past 

Be all the color of the flower: 

So then were nothing lost to man ; 

So that still garden of the souls 

In many a figured leaf enrolls 
The total world since life began ; 

And love will last as pure and whole 
As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime 

Rewaken with the dawning soul. 

XLIV. 

How fares it with the happy dead? 

For here the man is more and more ; 



40 IN MEMORIAM. 

But he forgets the days before 
God shut the doorways of his head. 

The days have vanish 'd, tone and tint, 
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense 
Gives out at times (he knows not whence) 

A little flash, a mystic hint; 

And in the long harmonious years 

(If Death so tastes Lethean springs), 
May some dim touch of earthly things 

Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. 

If such a dreamy touch should fall, 

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt; 
My guardian angel will speak out 

In that high place, and tell thee all. 

XLV. 

The baby new to earth and sky. 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Aganst the circle of the breast. 

Has never thought that "this is I:" 

But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of "I," and "me,** 
And finds "I am not what I see. 

And other than the things I touch." 

So rounds he to a separate mind 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 



IN MEMORIAM. 41 

This use may lie in blood and breath, 

Which else were fruitless of their due, 
Had man to learn himself anew 

Beyond the second birth of Death. 

XLVI. 

We ranging down this lower track, 

The path we came by, thorn and flower, 
Is shadow'd by the growing hour, 

Lest life should fail in looking back. 

So be it : there no shade can last 

In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 

But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 

The eternal landscape of the past ; 

A lifelong tract of time reveal'd; 

The fruitful hours of still increase; 

Days order'd in a wealthy peace. 
And those five years its richest field. 

O Love, thy province were not large, 
A bounded field, nor stretching far; 
Look also, Love, a brooding star, 

A rosy warmth from marge to marge. 

XLVIL 

That each, who seems a separate whole. 
Should move his round, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 

Remerging in the general Soul, 

4 In Memoriarrv 



42 IN MEMORIAM. 

Is faith as vague as all unsweet: 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all besides, 

And I shall know him when we meet: 

And we shall sit at endless feast, 
Enjoying- each the other's good: 
What vaster dream can hit the mood 

Of Love on earth? He seeks at least 

Upon the last and sharpest height, 
Before the spirits fade away, 
Some landing-place, to clasp and say, 

"Farewell! We lose ourselves in light." 

XLVIII. 

If these briefs lays, of Sorrow born, 
Were taken to be such as closed 
Grave doubts and answers here proposed, 

Then these were such as men might scorn : 

Her care is not to part and prove ; 

She takes, when harsher moods remit, 
What slender shade of doubt may fit. 

And makes it vassal unto love: 

And hence, indeed, she sports with words, 
But better serves a wholesome law, 
And holds its sin and shame to draw 

The deepest measure from the chords: 

Nor dare she trust a larger lay, 

But rather loosens from, the lip 



IN MEMORIAM. 43 

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
Their wings in tears, and skim away. 

XLIX. 

From art, from nature, from the schools, 
Let random influences glance, 
I/ike light in many a shiver'd lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools: 

The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, 
The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe. 
The slightest air of song shall breathe 

To make the sullen surface crisp. 

And look thy look, and go thy way, 

But blame not thou the winds that make 
The seeming-wanton ripple break, 

The tender-pencil'd shadow play. 

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears 
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, 
Whose muffled motions blindly drown 

The bases of my life in tears. 



Be near me when my light is low, 

When the blood creeps, and the nerves 
prick 

And tingle; and the heart is sick, 
And all the wheels of Being slow. 

Be near me when the sensuous frame 

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust; 



44 IN MEMORIAM. 

And Time, a maniac scattering- dust, 
And Life, a Fury slinging flame. 

Be near me when my faith is dry. 

And men the flies of latter spring, 
That lay their eggs and sting and sing 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

Be near me when I fade away. 

To point the term of human strife, 
And on the low dark verge of life 

The twilight of eternal day. 

LI. 

Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side? 
Is there no baseness we would hide? 

No inner vileness that we dread? 

Shall he for whose applause I strove, 
I had such reverence for his blame, 
See with clear eye some hidden shame 

And I be lessen'd in his love? 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? 
There must be wisdom with great Death 

The dead shall look me thro* and thro'. 

Be near us when we climb or fall: 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all. 



IN MEMORIAM. 45 

LII. 

I cannot love thee as I ought, 

For love reflects the thing beloved : 
My words are only words, and moved 

Upon the topmost froth of thought. 

"Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song," 
The Spirit of true love replied ; 
"Thou canst not move me from thy side, 

Nor human frailty do me wrong. 

"What keeps a spirit wholly true 

To that ideal which he bears? 

What record? not the sinless years 
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue: 

"So fret not, like an idle girl, 

That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. 

Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in, 
When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl. " 

LIII. 

How many a father have I seen, 
A sober man, among his boys, 
Whose youth was full of foolish noise, 

Who wears his manhood hale and green : 

And dare we to this fancy give, 

That had the wild oat not been sown. 
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown 

The grain by which a man may live? 



46 IN MEMORIAM. 

Or, if we held the doctrine sound 
For life outliving heats of youth, 
Yet who would preach it as a truth, 

To those that eddy round and round? 

Hold thou the good: define it well: 

For fear divine Philosophy 

Should push beyond her mark, and be 
Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 

LIV. 

Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 

That nothing walks with aimless foet; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete; 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivel' d in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 

Behold, we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream; but what am I? 
An infant crying in the night: 



IN MEMORIAM. 47 

An infant crying for the light: 
And with no language but a cry. 

LV. 

The wish, that of the living whole 

No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soul? 

Are God and Nature then at strife. 

That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life ; 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope. 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

LVI. 

**So careful of the type?" but no. 

From scarped cliff and quarried stone 



48 IN MEMORIAM. 

She cries, "A thousand types are gone 
I care for nothing, all shall go. 

"Thou makest thine appeal to me: 
I bring to life, I bring to death: 
The spirit does but mean the breath: 

I know no more." And he, shall he, 

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
vSuch splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer. 

Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shriek 'd against his creed — 

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills? 

No more? A monster then a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime. 
That tare each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music match'd with him. 

O life as futile, then, as frail! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless! 

What hope of answer, or redress? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 



IN MEMORIAM. 49 

LVII. 

Peace ; come away ; the song of woe 
Is after all an earthly song : 
Peace ; come away : we do him wrong 

To sing so wildly : let us go. 

Come ; let us go : your cheeks are pale ; 
But half my life I leave behind: 
Methinks my friend is richly shrined; 

But I shall pass ; my work will fail. 

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, 
One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 

That ever look'd with human eyes. 

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er, 

Eternal greetings to the dead; 

And "Ave, Ave, Ave," said, 
"Adieu, adieu," for evermore. 

LVIII. 

In those sad words I took farewell : 
Like echoes in sepulchral halls. 
As drop by drop the water falls 

In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; 

And, falling, idly broke the peace 

Of hearts that beat from day to day, 
Half-conscious of their dying clay, 

And those cold crypts where they shall cease. 

4 



50 IN MEMORIAM. 

The high Muse answer 'd: "Wherefore grieve 
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear? 
Abide a little longer here, 

And thou shalt take a nobler leave. " 

LIX. 

O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me 
No casual mistress, but a wife, 
My bosom-friend and half of life; 

As I confess it needs must be; 

O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, 
Be sometimes lovely like a bride, 
And put thy harsher moods aside, 

If thou wilt have me wise and good. 

My centered passion cannot move, 

Nor will it lessen from to-day ; 

But I'll have leave at times to play 
As with the creature of my love ; 

And set thee forth, for thou art mine, 

With so much hope for years to come. 
That, howsoe'er I know thee, some 

Could hardly tell what name were thine. 

LX. 

He past ; a soul of nobler tone : 

My spirit loved and loves him yet, 
Like some poor girl v\^hose heart is set 
On one whose rank exceeds her own. 



IN ME?/[ORIAM. 51 

He mixing with his proper sphere, 
She finds the baseness of her lot, 
Half jealous of she knows not what, 

And envying all that meet him there. 

The little village looks forlorn ; 

She sighs amid her narrow days. 
Moving about the household ways, 

In that dark house where she was born. 

The foolish neighbors come and go, 

And tease her till the day draws by : 
At night she weeps, "How vain am I! 

How should he love a thing so low?" 

LXI. 

If, in thy second state sublime. 

Thy ransom'd reason change replies 
With all the circle of the wise. 

The perfect flower of human time ; 

And if thou cast thine eyes below, 

How dimly character'd and slight. 

How dwarf 'd a growth of cold and night, 

How blanch'd with darkness must I grow! 

Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, 

Where thy first form was made a man; 
I loved thee. Spirit, and love, nor can 

The soul of Shakespeare love thee more. 

LXII. 

Tho' if an eye that's downward cast 

Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, 



52 IN MEMORIAM. 

Then be my love an idle tale, 
And fading legend of the past; 

And thou, as one that once declined, 
When he was little more than boy, 
On some unworthy heart with joy, 

But lives to wed an equal mind ; 

And breathes a novel world, the while 
His other passion wholly dies, 
Or in the light of deeper eyes 

Is matter for a flying smile. 

LXIII. 

Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven, 

And love in which my hound has part, 
Can hang no weight upon my heart 

In its assumptions up to heaven; 

And I am so much more than these, 

As thou, perchance, art more than I, 
And yet I spare them sympathy, 

And I would set their pains at ease. 

So mayst thou watch me where I weep, 
As, unto vaster motions bound, 
The circuits of thine orbit round 

A higher height, a deeper deep. 

LXIV. 

Dost thou look back on what hath been. 
As some divinely gifted man, 



IN MEMORIAM. 53 

Whose life in low estate began 
And on a simple village green ; 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 

And grasps the skirts of happy chance. 
And breasts the blows of circumstance 

And grapples with his evil star; 

Who makes by force his merit knov/n 
And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty state's decrees. 

And shape the whisper of the throne ; 

And moving up from high to higher. 

Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 

The center of a world's desire; 

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, 

When all his active powers ar@ still, 
A distant dearness in the hill, 

A secret sweetness in the stream. 

The limit of his narrower fate 

While yet beside its vocal springs 
He play'd at counselors and kings, 

With one that was his earliest mate ; 

Who ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labor of his hands, 
Or in the furrow musing stands; 

*'Does my old friend remem.ber me?" 



64 IN MEMORIAM. 

LXV. 

Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt; 

I lull a fancy trouble-tost 

With "Love's too precious to be lost^ 
A little grain shall not be spilt." 

And in that solace can I sing, 

Till out of painful phases wrought 
There flutters up a happy thought, 

Self-balanced on a lightsome wing: 

Since we deserved the name of friends 
And thine effect so lives in me, 
A part of mine may live in thee 

And move thee on to noble ends. 

LXVI. 

You thought my heart too far diseased; 
You wonder when my fancies play 
To find me gay among the gay, 

Like one with any trifle pleased. 

The shade by which my life was crost. 
Which makes a desert in the mind. 
Has made me kindly with my kind, 

And like to him whose sight is lost; 

Whose feet are guided thro' the land. 

Whose jest among his friends is free,, 
Who takes the children on his knee, 

And winds their curls about his hand: 



IN MEMORIAM. 55 

He plays with threads, he beats his chair 
For pastime, dreaming of the sky; 
His inner day can never die, 

His night of loss is always there. 

LXVII. 

When on my bed the moonlight falls, 
I know that in thy place of rest 
By that broad water of the west, 

There comes a glory on the walls; 

Thy marble bright in dark appears, 

As slowly steals a silver flame 

Along the letters of thy name, 
And o'er the number of thy years. 

The mystic glory swims away; 

From off my bed the moonlight dies; 

And closing eaves of wearied eyes 
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray: 

And then I know the mist is drawn 
A lucid veil from coast to coast, 
And in the dark church like a ghost 

Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. 

LXVIII. 

When in the down I sink my head, 

Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my 

breath ; 
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not 
Death, 
Nor can I dream of thee as dead: 



^6 IN MEMORIAM. 

I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, 

When all our path was fresh with dew, 
And all the bugle breezes blew 

Reveillee to the breakin-g morn. 

But what is this? I turn about, 
I find a trouble in thine eye, 
Which makes me sad I know not why, 

Nor can my dream resolve the doubt: 

But ere the lark hath left the lea 
I wake, and I discern the truth; 
It is the trouble of my youth 

That foolish sleep transfers to thee. 

LXIX. 

I dream'd there would be Spring- no more, 
That Nature's ancient power was lost: 
The streets were black with smoke and 
frost. 

They chatter'd trifks at the door: 

I wander'd from the noisy town, 

I found a wood with thorny boughs: 
I took the thorns to bind my brows, 

I wore them like a civic crown: 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns 

From youth and babe and hoary hairs: 
They call'd me in the public squares 

The fool that wears a crown of thorns: 

They call'd me fool, they call'd me child: 
I found an angel of the night; 



IN MEMORIAM. 67 

The voice was low, the look was bright ; 
He look'd upon my crown and smiled: 

He reach 'd the glory of a hand, 

That seem'd to touch it into leaf: 
The voice was not the voice of grief, 

The words were hard to understand. 

LXX. 

I cannot see the features right, 

When on the gloom I strive to paint 
The face I know ; the hues are faint 

And mix with hollow masks of night; 

Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, 
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, 
A hand that points, and palled shapes 

In shadowy thoroughfares of thought; 

And crowds that stream from yawning doors. 
And shoals of pucker'd faces drive; 
Dark bulks that tumble half alive, 

And lazy lengths on boundless shores; 

Till all at once beyond the will 

I hear a wizard music roll, 

And thro' a lattice on the soul 
Looks thy fair face and makes it still. 

LXXI. 

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance 
And madness, thou hast forged at last 



68 IN MEMORIAM. 

A night-long- Present of the Past 
In which we went thro' summer France. 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul? 
Then bring an opiate trebly strong, 
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong 

That so my pleasure may be whole ; 

While now we talk as once we talk'd 

Of men and minds, the dust of change, 
The days that grow to something strange, 

In walking as of old we walk'd 

Beside the river's wooded reach, 

The fortress, and the mountain ridge, 
The cataract flashing from the bridge, 

The breaker breaking on the beach. 

LXXII. 

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, 
And howlest, issuing out of night. 
With blasts that blow the poplar white, 

And lash with storm the streaming pane? 

Day, when my crown 'd estate begun 
To pine in that reverse of doom, 
Which sicken'd every living bloom. 

And blurr'd the splendor of the sun; 

Who usherest in the dolorous hour 

With thy quick tears that make the rose 
Pull sideways, and the daisy close 

Her crimson frinores to the shower; 



IN MEMORIAM. 59 

Who might'st have heaved a windless flame 
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd 
A chequer- work of beam and shade 

Along the hills, yet look'd the same. 

As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; 

Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime, 
When the dark hand struck down thro' 
time. 

And cancell'd nature's best: but thou, 

Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows 

Thro' clouds that drench the morning star, 
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar, 

And sow the sky with flying boughs, 

And up they vault with roaring sound 

Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day; 
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, 

And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 

LXXIII. 

So many worlds, so much to do. 

So little done, such things to be, 
How know I what had need of thee, 

For thou wert strong as thou wert true? 

The fame is quench *d that I foresaw. 

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath 
I curse not nature, no, nor death; 

For nothing is that errs from law. 

We pass ; the path that each man trod 
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds; 



60 IN MEMORIAM. 

What fame is left for human deeds 
In endless age? It rests with God. 

O hollow wraith of dying fame, 

Fade wholly, while the soul exults, 
And self-infolds the large results 

Of force that would have forged a name. 

LXXIV. 
As sometimes in a dead man's face. 



To those that watch it more and more, 
A likeness, hardly seen before. 
Comes out — to some one of his race: 

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 
I see thee what thou art, and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 

Thy kindred with the great of old. 

But there is more than I can see, 
And what I see I leave unsaid, 
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made 

His darkness beautiful with thee. 

LXXV. 

I leave thy praises unexpress'd 

In verse that brings myself relief, 
And by the measure of my grief 

I leave thy greatness to be guess'd; 

What practice howsoe'er expert 

In fitting aptest words to things, 



IN MEMORIAM. 61 

Or voice the richest-toned that sings, 
Hath power to give thee as thou wert? 

I care not in these fading days 

To raise a cry that lasts not long, 

And round thee with the breeze of song 

To stir a little dust of praise. 

Thy leaf has perish'd in the green. 

And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
The world which credits what is done 

Is cold to all that might have been. 

So here shall silence guard thy fame ; 
But somewhere, out of human view, 
Whate'er thy hands are set to do 

Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 

LXXVI. 

Take wings of fancy, and ascend, 
And in a moment set thy face 
Where all the starry heavens of space 

Are sharpen'd to a needle's end; 

Take wings of foresight; lighted thro* 
The secular abyss to come, 
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb 

Before the mouldering of a yew ; 

And if the matin songs, that woke 
The darkness of our planet, last. 
Thine own shall wither in the vast, 

Ere half the lifetime of an oak. 



62 IN MEMORIAM. 

Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers 
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain; 
And what are they when these remain 

The ruin'd shells of hollow towers? 

LXXVII. 

What hope is here for modern rhyme 
To him, who turns a musing eye 
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie 

Foreshorten'd in the tract of time? 

These mortal lullabies of pain 

May bind a book, may line a box. 
May serve to curl a maiden's locks; 

Or when a thousand moons shall wane 

A man upon a stall may find. 

And, passing, turn the page that tells 

A grief, then changed to something else, 

Sung by a long-forgotten mind. 

But what of that? My darken 'd ways 
Shall ring with music all the same; 
To breathe my loss is more than fame, 

To utter love more sweet than praise. 

LXXVIII. 

Again at Christmas did we weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth; 
The silent snow possess'd the earth, 

And calmlv fell our Christmas-eve: 



IN MEMORIAM. 63 

The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, 
No wing of wind the region swept, 
But over all things brooding slept 

The quiet sense of something lost. 

As in the winters left behind, 

Again our ancient games had place, 
The mimic picture's breathing grace, 

And dance and song and hoodman-blind. 

Who show'd a token of distress? 

No single tear, no mark of pain : 

sorrow, then can sorrow wane? 
O grief, can grief be changed to less? 

O last regret, regret can die ! 

No — mixt with all this mystic frame, 
Her deep relations are the same. 

But with long use her tears are dry. 

LXXIX. 

*'More than my brothers are to me," — 
Let this not vex thee, noble heart! 

1 know thee of what force thou art 
To hold the costliest love in fee. 

But thou and I are one in kind. 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 
And hill and wood and field did print 

The same sweet forms in either mind. 

For us the same cold streamlet curl'd 

Thro' all his eddying coves; the same 



64 IN MEMORIAM. 

All winds that roam the twilight came 
In whispers of the beauteous world. 

At one dear knee we proffer'd vows, 

One lesson from one book we learn 'd, 
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 

To black and brown on kindred brows. 

And so my wealth resembles thine, 
But he was rich where I was poor, 
And he supplied my want the more 

As his unlikeness fitted mine. 

LXXX. 

If any vague desire should rise, 

That holy Death ere Arthur died 
Had moved me kindly from his side. 

And drop the dust on tearless eyes ; 

Then fancy shapes, as fancy can, 

The grief my loss in him had wrought, 
A grief as deep as life or thought, 

But stay'd in peace with God and man. 

I make a picture in the brain; 

I hear the sentence that he speaks ; 

He bears the burthen of the weeks 
But turns his burthen into gain. 

His credit thus shall set me free ; 

And, influence rich to soothe and save, 
Unused exampled from the grave 

Reach out dead hands to comfort me. 




Had babbled 'Uncle' on my knee."— Page 67, 

In Memoriam. 



IN MEMORIAM. . 65 

LXXXI. 

Could I have said while he was here, 

"My love shall now no further range; 
There cannot come a mellower change, 

For now is love mature in ear." 

Love, then, had hope of richer store: 
What end is here to my complaint? 
This haunting whisper makes me faint, 

"More years had made me love thee more." 

But Death returns an answer sweet: 

"My sudden frost was sudden gain, 
And gave all ripeness to the grain, 

It might have drawn from after-heat." 

LXXXII. 

I wage not any feud with Death 

For changes wrought on form and face: 
No lower life that earth's embrace 

May breed with him, can fright my faith. 

Eternal process moving on, 

From state to state the spirit walks ; 

And these are but the shatter'd stalks, 
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one 

Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
The use of virtue out of earth: 
T know transplanted human worth 

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 

5 In Memoriam 



66 IN MEMORIAM. 

For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners in my heart; 
He put our lives so far apart 

We cannot hear each other speak. 

LXXXIII. 

Dip down upon the northern shore, 
O sweet new-year delaying long ; 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong; 

Delaying long, delay no more. 

What stays thee from the clouded noons. 
Thy sweetness from its proper place? 
Can trouble live with April days, 

Or sadness in the summer moons? 

Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
The little speedwell's darling blue. 
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 

Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. 

O thou, new-year, delaying long, 

Delayest the sorrow in my blood, 
That longs to burst a frozen bud 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 



LXXXIV. 

When I contemplate all alone 

The life that had been thine below. 
And fix my thoughts on all the glow 

To which thv crescent would have grown; 



IN MEMORIAM. 67 

I see thee sitting crown 'd with good, 
A central warmth diffusing bliss 
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, 

On all the branches of thy blood. 

Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine; 
For now the day was drawing on, 
When thou should' st link thy life with one 

Of my own house, and boys of thine 

Had babbled ** Uncle" on my knee; 
But that remorseless iron hour 
Made cypress of her orange flower, 

Despair of Hope, and earth of thee. 

I seem to meet their least desire. 

To clap their cheeks, and call them mine. 

I see their unborn faces shine 
Beside the never-lighted fire. 

I see myself an honor'd guest. 

Thy partner in the flowery walk 
Of letters, genial table-talk. 

Or deep dispute, and graceful jest; 

While now thy prosperous labor fills 
The lips of men with honest praise. 
And sun by sun the happy days 

Descend below the golden hills 

With promise of a morn as fair; 

And all the train of bounteous hours 
Conduct by paths of growing powers. 

To reverence and the silver hair: 



68 IN MEMORIAM. 

Till slowly worn her earthly robe, 

Her lavish mission richly wrought, 
Leaving great legacies of thought, 

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ; 

What time mine awn might also flee, 

As link'd with thine in love and fate, 
And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait 

To the other shore, involved in thee. 

Arrived at last the blessed goal. 

And He that died in Holy Land 
Would reach us out the shining hand, 

And take us as a single soul. 

That reed was that on which I leant? 

Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
The old bitterness again, and break 

The low beginnings of content. 

LXXXV. 

This truth came borne with bier and pall, 
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most, 
'Tis better to have loved and lost, 

Than never to have loved at all 

O true in word, and tried in deed, 
Demanding, so to bring relief 
To this which is our common grief, 

What kind of life is that I lead; 

And whether trust in things above 

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; 



IN MEMORIAM. 69 

And whether love for him have drain 'd 
My capabilities of love ; 

Your words have virtue such as draws 
A faithful answer from the breast, 
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest, 

And loyal unto kindly laws. 

My blood an even tenor kept, 

Till on mine ear this message falls, 
That in Vienna's fatal walls 

God's finger touch'd him, and he slept. 

The great Intelligences fair 

That range above our mortal state, 
In circles round the blessed gate, 

Received and gave him welcome there ; 

And led him thro' the blissful chimes, 

And show'd him in the fountain fresh 
All knowledge that the sons of flesh 

Shall gather in the cycled times. 

But I remain 'd, whose hopes were dim, 

Whose life, whose thoughts were little 

worth. 
To wander on a darken'd earth, 

Where all things round me breathed of him. 

O friendship, equal-poised control, 

O heart, with kindliest motion warm, 
O sacred essence, other form, 

O solemn ghost, O crowned soul ! 



70 IN MEMORIAM. 

Yet none could better know than I, 
How much of act at human hands 
The sense of human will demands 

By which we dare to live or die. 

Whatever way my days decline, 
I felt and feel, tho' left alone, 
His being working in mine own, 

The footsteps of his life in mine ; 

A life that all the Muses deck'd 

With gifts of grace, that might express 
All comprehensive tenderness, 

All-subtilizing intellect: 

And so my passion hath not swerved 
To works of weakness, but I find 
An image comforting the mind, 

And in my grief a strength reserved. 

Likewise the imaginative woe. 

That loved to handle spiritual strife. 
Diffused the shock thro* all my life, 

But in the present broke the blow. 

My pulses therefore beat again 

For other friends that once I met ; 
Nor can it suit me to forget 

The mighty hopes that make us men. 

I woo your love : I count it crime 
To mourn for any overmuch ; 
I, the divided half of such 

A friendship as had master'd Time; 



IN MEMORIAM. 71 

Which masters Time indeed, and is 
Eternal, separate from fears: 
The all-assuming months and years 

Can take no part away from this : 

But Summer on the streaming floods, 

And spring that swells the narrow brooks, 
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, 

That gather in the waning woods, 

And every pulse of wind and wave 

Recalls, in change of light or gloom, 
My old affection of the tomb, 

And my prime passion in the grave : 

My old affection of the tomb, 

A part of stillness, yearns to speak : 
** Arise, and get thee forth and seek 

A friendship for the years to come. 

**I watch thee from the quiet shore; 

Thy spirit up to mine can reach ; 

But in dear words of human speech 
We two communicate no more." 

And I, "Can clouds of nature stain 
The starry clearness of the free? 
How is it? Canst thou feel for me 

Some painless sympathy with pain?" 

And lightly does the whisper fall ; 

" 'Tis hard for thee to fathom this; 

I triumph in conclusive bliss. 
And that serene result of all. " 



72 IN MEMORIAM. 

So hold I commerce with the dead; 

Or so methinks the dead would say; 

Or so shall grief with symbols play 
And pining life be fancy-fed. 

Now looking to some settled end, 

That these things pass, and I shall prove 
A meeting somewhere, love with love, 

I crave your pardon, O my friend; 

If not so fresh, with love as true, 
I, clasping brother-hands, aver 
I could not, if I would, transfer 

The whole I felt for him to you. 

For which be they that hold apart 

The promise of the golden hours? 

First love, first friendship, equal powers, 

That marry with the virgin heart. 

Still mine, that cannot but deplore. 
That beats within a lonely place. 
That yet remembers his embrace, 

But at his footstep leaps no more, 

My heart, th' widow'd may not rest 
Quite in the love of what is gone, 
But seeks to beat in time with one 

That warms another living breast. 

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring. 
Knowing the primrose yet is dear, 
The primrose of the later year. 

As not unlike to that of Spring. 



IN MEMORIAM. 73 

LXXXVI. 

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 

That roUest from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 

And meadow, slowly breathing bare 

The round of space, and rapt below 
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood. 
And shadowing down the horned flood 

In ripples, fan my brows and blow 

The fever from my cheek, and sigh 

The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and 
Death, 

111 brethren, let the fancy fly. 

From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odor streaming far, 
To where in yonder orient star 

A hundred spirits whisper "Peace. " 

LXXXVII. 

I past beside the reverend walls 

In which of old I wore the gown ; 
I roved at random thro' the t6wn, 

And saw the tumult of the halls; 

And heard once more in college fanes 

The storm their high-built organs make. 
And thunder-music, rolling, shake 

The prophet blazon'd on the panes; 

6 In Memoriam 



74 IN MEMORIAM. 

And caught once more the distant shout, 
The measured pulse of racing oars 
Among the willows; paced the shores 

And many a bridge, and all about. 

The same gray flats again, and felt 

The same, but not the same ; and last 
Up that long walk of limes I past 

To see the rooms in which he dwelt. 

Another name was on the door: 

I linger'd; all within was noise 

Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys 

That crash'd the glass and beat the floor; 

Where once we held debate, a band 

Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
And labor, and the changing mart, 

And all the framework of the land; 

When one would aim an arrow fair, 

But send it slackly from the string; 
And one would pierce an outer ring. 

And one an inner, here and there; 

And last the master-bowman, he, 

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear 
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear 

The rapt oration flowing free 

From point to point, with power and grace 
And music in the bounds of law. 
To those conclusions when we saw 

The God within him light his face. 



IN MEMORIAM, 75 



And seem to lift the form, and glow- 
In azure-orbits heavenly- wise; 
And over those ethereal eyes 

The bar of Michael Angelo. 



LXXXVIII. 

Wild birds, whose warble, liquid sweet, 
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, 

tell me where the senses mix, 
O tell me where the passions meet. 

Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ 
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, 
And in the midmost heart of grief 

Thy passion clasps a secret joy: 

And I — my harp would prelude woe — 

1 cannot all command the strings; 
The glory of the sum of things 

Will flash along the chords and go. 



LXXXIX. 

Witch-elms that counterchange the floor 
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; 
And thou, with all thy breadth and height 

Of foliage, towering sycamore ; 

How often, hither w^andering down, 

My Arthur found your shadows fair, 
And shook to all the liberal air 

The dust and din and steam of town : 



76 IN MEMORIAM. 

He brought an eye for all he saw ; 

He mixt in all our simple sports; 

They pleased him, fresh from brawling 
courts 
And dusty purlieus of the law. 

O joy to him in this retreat, 

Immantled in ambrosial dark. 
To drink the cooler air, and mark 

The landscape winking thro' the heat: 

O sound to rout the brood of cares, 

The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 
The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears! 

O bliss, when all in circle drawn 

About him, heart and ear were fed 
To hear him, as he lay and read 

The Tuscan poets on the lawn : 

Or in the all-golden afternoon 

A guest, or happy sister, sung, 

Or here she brought the harp and flung 

A ballad to the brightening moon : 

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, 
Beyond the bounding hill to stray. 
And break the lifelong summer day 

With banquet in the distant woods; 

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme 
Discuss'd the books to love or hate, 
Or touch 'd the changes of the state, 

Or threaded some Socratic dream ; 



IN MEMORIAM. 77 

But if I praised the busy town, 

He loved to rail against it still, 
For "ground in yonder social mill 

We rub each other's angles dovN^n, 

"And merge," he said, "in form and gloss 
The picturesque of man and man." 
We talk'd: the stream beneath us ran. 

The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss, 

Or cool'd within the glooming wave; 
And last, returning from afar, 
Before the crimson-circled star 

Had fall'n into her father's grave, 

And brushing ankle-deep in flowers. 
We heard behind the woodbine veil 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 

And buzzings of the honied hours. 

XC. 

He tasted love with half his mind. 

Nor ever drank the inviolate spring 
Where nighest Heaven, who flrst could 
fling 

This bitter seed among mankind; 

That could the dead, whose dying eyes 

Were closed with wail, resume th^ir life. 
They would but find in child and wife 

An iron welcome when they rise : 

'Twas v/ell, indeed, when warm with wine. 
To pledge them vnth a kindly tear, 



78 IN MEMORIAM. 

To talk them o'er, to wish them here, 
To count their memories half divine; 

But if they came who past away, 

Behold their brides in other hands; 
The hard heir strides about their lands, 

And will not yield them for a day. 

Yea, tho' their sons were none of these, 
Not less the yet-loved sire would make 
Confusion worse than death, and shake 

The pillars of domestic peace. 

Ah dear, but come thou back to me: 

Whatever change the years have wrought, 
I find not yet one lonely thought 

That cries against my wish for thee. 

XCI. 

When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, 

And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; 
Or underneath the barren bush 

Flits by the blue sea-bird of March; 

Come, wear the form by which I know 
Thy spirit in time among thy peers; 
The hope of unaccomplish'd years 

Be large and lucid round thy brow. 

When summer's hourly-mellovv'ing change 
May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 

That ripple round the lonely grange ; 



IN MEMORIAM. 79 

Come: not in watches of the night, 

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, 
Come, beauteous in thine after form, 

And like a finer light in light. 

XCII. 

If any vision should reveal 

Thy likeness, I might count it vain 
As but the canker of the brain; 

Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal 

To chances where our lots were cast 

Together in the days behind, 

I might but say, I hear a wind 
Of memory murmuring the past. 

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view 
A fact within the coming year; 
And tho' the months, revolving near, 

Should prove the phantom-warning true, 

They might not seem thy prophecies, 

But spiritual presentiments. 

And such refraction of events 
As often rises ere they rise. 

XCIII. 

I shall not see thee. Dare I say 
No spirit ever brake the band 
That stays him from the native land 

Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay? 



80 IN ME MORI AM. 

No visual shade of some one lost, 

But he, the Spirit himself, itielj come 
Where all the nerve of sense is num^b; 

Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. 

O, therefore from thy sightless rang-e 
Of gods in unconjectured bliss, 
O, from the distance of the abyss 

Of tenfold-complicated change, 

Descend, and touch, and enter; hear 

The wish too strong for words to name ; 
That in this blindness of the frame 

My Ghost may feel that thine is near. 



XCIV. 

How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold 
Should be the man whose thought would 
hold 

An hour's communion with the dead. 

In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 

My spirit is at peace with all. 

They haunt the silence of the breast, 
Imaginations calm and fair, 
The memory like a cloudless air, 

The conscience as a sea at rest: 



IN MEMORIAM. 81 

But when the heart is full of din, 

And doubt beside the portal waits, 
The}^ can but listen at the gates, 

And hear the household jar within. 

xcv. 

By night we linger'd on the lawn, 
For underfoot the herb was dry; 
And genial Vv^armth ; and o'er the sky 

The silvery haze of summer drawn; 

And calm that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering; not a cricket chirr'd: 
The brook alone far-off was heard, 

And on the board the fluttering urn: 

And bats went round in fragrant skies, 
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes; 

While now we sang old songs that peal'd 

From knoll to knoll, where, couch 'd at 

ease, 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field. 

But when those others, one by one, 

Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
And in the house light after light 

Went out, and I was all alone. 

A hunger seized my heart; I read 

Of that glad year which once had been^ 





82 IN MEMORIAM. 

In those fall'n leaves which kept their 
green, 
The noble letters of the dead: 

And strangely on the silence broke 

The silent-speaking words, and strange 
Was love's dumb cry defying change 

To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 

The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell 

On doubts that drive the coward back, 
And keep thro* wordy snares to track 

Suggestion to her inmost cell. 

So word by word, and line by line, 

The dead man touch'd me from the past. 
And all at once it seem'd at last 

The living soul was flash'd on mine, 

And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd 
About empyrial heights of thought, 
And came on that which is, and caught 

The deep pulsations of the world, 

^■^onian music measuring out 

The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance — 
The blows of Death. At length my trance 

Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. 

Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame 
In matter-moulded forms of speech. 
Or ev'n for intellect to reach 

Thro' memory that which I became: 



IN MEMORIAM. 83 

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal' d 

The knolls once more where, couch'd at 

ease, 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field : 

And suck'd from out the distant gloom 
A breeze began to tremble o'er 
The large leaves of the sycamore. 

And fluctuate all the still perfume, 

And gathering freshlier overhead, 

Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung 
The heavy-folded rose, and flung 

The lilies to and fro, and said 

*'The dawn, the dawn," and died away; 
And East and West, without a breath, 
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 

To broaden into boundless day. 

XCVI. 

You say, but with no touch of scorn. 

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies. 

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 

I know^ not : one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touch 'd a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true: 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 
At last he beat his music out. 



84 IN MEMORIAM. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind. 
He faced the specters of the mind 

And laid them: thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which m.akes the darkness and the light, 

And dv/ells not in the light alone, 

But in the darkness and the cloud, 
As over Sinai's peaks of old, 
While Israel made their gods of gold 

Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. 

XCVII. 

My love has talk'd with rocks and trees; 
He finds no misty mountain-ground 
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd; 

He sees himself in all he sees. 

Two partners of a married life — 

I look'd on these and thought of thee 
In vastness and in mystery. 

And of my spirit as of a wife. 

These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, 
Their hearts of old had beat in tune. 
Their meetings made December June, 

Their every parting v/as to die. 



IN MEMORIAM. 85 

Their love has never passed away; 
The days she never can forget 
Are earnest that he loves her yet, 

Whate'er the faithless people say. 

Her life is lone, he sits apart, 

He loves her yet, she will not v/eep, 
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep 

He seems to slight her simple heart. 

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 
He reads the secret of the star. 
He seems so near and yet so far, 

He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 

She keeps the gift of years before, 
A wither'd violet is her bliss: 
She knows not what his greatness is, 

For that, for all, she loves him more. 

For him she plays, to him she signs 
Of early faith and plighted vows ; 
She knows but matters of the house, 

And he, he knows a thousand things. 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move, 

She darkly feels him great and wise. 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 

*' I cannot understand; I love." 

xcvni. 

You leave us, you vv'ill see the P.hine, 
x\nd those fair hills I sail'd below, 



86 IN ME MORI AM. 

When I was there with him ; and go 
By summer belts of wheat and vine 

To where he breathed his latest breath, 
That City. All her splendor seems 
No livelier than the wisp that gleams 

On Lethe in the eyes of Death. 

Let her great Danube rolling fair 

Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me: 
I have not seen, I will not see 

Vienna ; rather dream that there, 

A treble darkness, Evil haunts 

The birth, the bridal; friend from friend 

Is oftener parted, fathers bend 
Above more graves, a thousand wants 

Guard at the heels of men, and prey 

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings 
Her shadow on the blaze of kings; 

And yet myself have heard him say, 

That not in any mother town 

With statelier progress to and fro 
The double tides of chariots flow 

By park and suburb under brown 

Of lustier leaves; nor more content. 
He told me, lives in any crowd. 
When all is gay with lamps, and loud . 

With sport and song, in booth and tent, 



IN MEMORIAM. 87 

Imperial halls, or open plain; 

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks 

The rocket molten into flakes 
Of crimson or in emerald rain. 

XCIX. 

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, 
So loud with voices of the birds, 
So thick with lowings of the herds. 

Day, when I lost the flower of men; 

Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red 

On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast 
By meadows breathing of the past 

And woodlands holy to the dead ; 

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves 
A song that slights the coming care, 
And Autumn laying here and there 

A flery finger on the leaves; 

Who wakest with thy balmy breath 
To myriads on the genial earth, 
Memories of bridal, or of birth. 

And unto myriads more, of death. 

wheresoever those may be. 

Betwixt the slumber of the poles. 
To-day they count as kindred sonls: 
They know me not, but mourn with me. 

C. 

1 climb the hill : from end to end 

Of all the landscape underneath, 



88 IN MEMORIAM. 

I find no place that does not breathe 
Some gracious memory of my friend; 

No gray old grange, or lonely fold, 

Or low morass and whispering reed, 
Or simple stile from mead to mead, 

Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; 

Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw 

That l^ears the latest linnet trill, 
Nor quarry trench'd along the hill 

And haunted by the wrangling daw; 

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock ; 
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves 
To left and right thro' meadowy curves, 

That feed the mothers of the flock ; 

But each has pleased a kindred eye. 
And each reflects a kindlier day; 
And leaving, these, to pass away, 

I think once more he seems to die. 

CI. 

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sv/ay, 
The tender blossom flutter down, 
Unloved, that beech will gather brown. 

This maple burn itself away; 

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 

Ray round with flames her disk of seed. 
And may a rose-carnation feed 

With summer spice the hummJng air; 



IN MEMORIAM. 89 

Unloved, by many a sandy bar, 

The brook shall babble down the plain, 
At noon or when the lesser wain 

Is twining round the polar star; 

Uncared for, gird the windy grove, 

And flood the haunts of hern and crake ; 
Or into silver arrows break 

The sailing moon in creek and cove ; 

Till from the garden and the wild 

A fresh association blow, 

And year by year the landscape grow 
Familiar to the stranger's child; 

As year by year the laborer tills 

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; 
And year by year our memory fades 

From all the circle of the hills. 

CII. 

We leave the well-beloved place 

Where first we gazed upon the sky; 
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, 

Will shelter one of stranger race. 

We go, but ere we go from home, 

As down the garden-walks I move, 
Two spirits of a diverse love 

Contend for loving masterdom. 

One whispers, '*Here thy boyhood sung 
Long since its matin song, and heard 



90 IN MEMORIAM. 

The low love-language of the bird 
In native hazels tassel-hung." 

The other answers, "Yea, but here 

Thy feet have stray'd in after hours 
With thy lost friend among the bowers, 

And this hath made them trebly dear." 

These two have striven half the day, 

And each prefers his separate claim, 
Poor rivals in a losing game, 

That will not yield each other way. 

I turn to go: my feet are set 

To leave the pleasant fields and farms ; 

They mix in one another's arms 
To one pure image of regret. 

cm. 

On that last night before we went 

From out the doors where I was bred, 
I dream'd a vision of the dead, 

Which left my after-morn content. 

Methought I dwelt within a hall. 

And maidens with me: distant hills 
From hidden summits fed with rills 

A river sliding by the wall. 

The hall v/ith harp and carol rang. 

They sang of what is wise and good 
And graceful. In the center stood 

A statue veil'd, to which they sang; 



IN MEMORIAM. 91 

And which, thro' veil'd, was known to me, 
The shape of him I loved, and love 
For ever ; then flew in a dove 

And brought a summons from the sea: 

And when they learnt that I must go 

They wept and wail'd, but led the way 
To where a little shallop lay 

At anchor in the flood below ; 

And on by many a level mead, 

And shadowing bluff that made the banks. 
We glided winding under ranks 

Of iris, and the golden reed ; 

And still as vaster grew the shore 

And roll'd the floods in grander space, 
The maidens gather'd strength and grace 

And presence, lordlier than before; 

And I myself, who sat apart 

And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb, 

I felt the thews of Anakim, 
The pulses of a Titan's heart; 

As one would sing the death of War, 
And one would chant the history 
Of that great race, which is to be, 

And one the shaping of a star; 

Until the forward-creeping tides 
Began to foam, and we to draw 
From deep to deep, to where we saw 

A great ship lift her shining sides. 



92 IN MEMORIAM. 

The man we loved v/as there on deck, 
But thrice as large as man he bent 
To greet us. Up the side I went, 

And fell in silence on his neck : 

Whereat those maidens with one mind 

Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong: 
"We served thee here," they said, '*so 
long, 

And wilt thou leave us now behind?" 

So rapt I was, they could not win 
An answer from my lips, but he 
Replying, "Enter likewise ye 

And go with us:" they enter'd in. 

And while the wind began to sweep 
A music out of sheet and shroud, 
We steer 'd her toward a crimson cloud 

That landlike slept along the deep. 

CIV. 

The time draws near the birth of Christ; 

The moon is hid, the night is still; 

A single church below the hill 
Is pealing, folded in the midst. 

A single peal of bells below. 

That wakens at this hour of rest 
A single murmur in the breast, 

That these are not the bells I know. 

Like strangers' voices here they sound. 
In lands where not a memory strays, 



IN MEMORIAM. 93 

Nor landmark breathes of other days, 
But all is new unhallow'd ground. 

CV. 

To-night tingather'd let us leave 
This laurel, let this holly stand : 
We live within the stranger's land, 

And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. 

Our father's dust is left alone 

And silent under other snows: 

There in due time the woodbine blows. 

The violet comes, but we are gone. 

No more shall wayward grief abuse 

The genial hour with mask and mime ; 
For change of place, like growth of time, 

Has broke the bond of dying use. 

Let cares that petty shadows cast. 

By which our lives are chiefly proved, 
A little spare the night I loved, 

And hold it solemn to the past. 

But let no footstep beat the floor, 

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; 
For who would keep an ancient form 

Thro' which the spirit breathes no more? 

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast; 

Nor harp be touch 'd, nor flute be blown ; 

No dance, no motion, save alone 
What lightens in the lucid east 



94 IN MEMORIAM. 

Of rising worlds by yonder wood. 

Long sleeps the summer in the seed: 
Run out your measured arcs, and lead 

The closing cycle rich in good. 

CVI. 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky. 
The flying cloud, the frosty light: 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 

Ring, happy bells, across the snow: 
The year is going, let him go; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more ; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause. 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin. 
The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes. 

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 

Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
The civic slander and the spite ; 



IN MEMORIAM. 96 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

CVII. 

It is the day when he was born, 

A bitter day that early sank 

Behind a purple-frosty bank 
Of vapor, leaving night forlorn. 

The time admits not flowers or leaves 
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies 
The blast of North and East, and ice 

Makes daggers at the sharpen 'd eaves, 

And bristles all the brakes and thorns 
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs 
Above the wood which grides and clangs 

Its leafless ribs and iron horns 

Together, in the drifts that pass 
To darken on the rolling brine 
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, 

Arrange the board and brim the glass; 



96 IN MEMORIAM. 

Bring in great logs and let them lie, 
To make a solid core of heat ; 
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat 

Of all things e'en as he were by ; 

We keep the day. With festal cheer, 
With books and music, surely we 
Will drink to him, whate'er he be, 

And sing the songs he loved to hear. 



CVIII. 

I will not shut me from my kind, 

And, lest I stiffen into stone, 

I will not eat my heart alone, 
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind : 

What profit lies in barren faith. 

And vacant, yearning, tho' with might 
To scale the heaven's highest height, 

Or dive below the wells of Death? 

What find I in the highest place. 

But mine own phantom chanting hymns? 

And on the depths of death there swims 
The reflex of a human face. 

I'll rather take^what fruit may be 
Of sorrow under human skies: 
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, 

Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. 



IN MEMORIAM. 97 

CIX. 

Heart-affluence in discursive talk 

From household fountains never dry; 
The critic clearness of an eye, 

That saw thro' all the Muses' walk; 

Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of man; 

Impassion'd logic, which outran 
The hearer in its fiery course ; 

High nature amorous of the good, 

But touch'd with no ascetic gloom; 
And passion pure in snowy bloom 

Thro' all the years of April blood; 

A love of freedom rarely felt, 
Of freedom in her regal seat 
Of England; not the schoolboy heat, 

The blind hysterics of the Celt ; 

And manhood fused with female grace 
In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 

And find his comfort in thy face ; 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on: if they look'd in vain, 
My shame is greater who remain. 

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. 

ex. 

Thy converse drew us with delight, 
The men of rathe and riper years: 

7 la Memoriam 



98 IN MEMORIAM. 

The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, 
Forgot his weakness in thy sight. 

On thee the loyal-hearted hung, 

The proud was half disarm *d of pride, 
Nor cared the serpent at thy side 

To flicker with his double tongue. 

The stern were mild when thou wert by. 
The flippant put himself to school 
And heard thee, and the brazen fool 

Was soften'd, and he knew not why, 

While I, thy nearest, sat apart. 

And felt thy triumph was as mine ; 

And loved them more, that they were thine, 

The graceful tact, the Christian art; 

Nor mine the sweetness or the skill. 

But mine the love that will not tire. 
And, born of love, the vague desire 

That spurs an imitative will. 

CXI. 

The churl in spirit, up or down 

Along the scale of ranks, thro' all, 
To him who grasps a golden ball, 

By blood a king, at heart a clown ; 

The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil 

His want in forms for fashion's sake, 
Will let his coltish nature break 

At seasons thro' the glided pale: 



IN MEMORIAM. 99 

For who can always act? but he, 

To whom a thousand memories call, 
Not being less but more than all 

The gentleness he seem'd to be, 

Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd 
Each office of the social hour 
To noble manners, as the flower 

And native growth of noble mind ; 

Nor ever narrowness or spite, 
Or villain fancy fleeting by. 
Drew in the expression of an eye, 

Where God and Nature met in light; 

And thus he bore without abuse 

The grand old name of gentleman. 
Defamed by every charlatan, 

And soil'd with all ignoble use. 

CXII. 

High wisdom holds my wisdom less, 

That I, who gaze with temperate eyes 
On glorious insufficiencies, 

Set light by narrower perfectness. 

But thou, that fillest all the room 

Of all my love, art reason why 

I seem to cast a careless eye 
On souls, the lesser lords of doom. 

For what wert thou? some novel power 
Sprang up forever at a touch, 

■"•"> UfC. 



100 IN MEMORIAM. 

And hope could never hope too much, 
In watching thee from hour to hour. 

Large elements in order brought 

And tracts of calm from tempest made, 
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd 

In vassal tides that follow 'd thought. 

CXIII. 

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise; 

Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee 
Which not alone had guided me, 

But served the seasons that may rise ; 

For can I doubt, who knew thee keen 
In intellect, with force and skill 
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — 

I doubt not what thou wouldst have been: 

A life in civic action warm, 

A soul on highest mission sent, 
A potent voice of Parliament, 

A pillar steadfast in the storm, 

Should licensed boldness gather force. 
Becoming, when the time has birth, 
A lever to uplift the earth 

And roll it in another course. 

With thousand shocks that come and go, 
With agonies, with energies, 
With overthrowings, and with cries 

And undulations to and fro. 



IN MEMORIAM. 101 



CXIV 



Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty? May she mix 
With men and prosper! Who shall fix 

Her pillars? Let her work prevail. 

But on her forehead sits a fire : 

She sets her forward countenance 
And leaps into the future chance. 

Submitting all things to desire. 

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — 
She cannot fight the fear of death. 
What is she, cut from love and faith, 

But some wild Pallas from the brain 

Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst 

All barriers in her onward race 

For power. Let her know her place; 

She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild. 
If all be not in vain ; and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 

With wisdom, like the younger child: 

For she is earthly of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
O, friend, who camest to thy goal 

So early, leaving me behind, 

I would the great world grew like thee, 
Who greatest not alone in power 



102 IN MEMORIAM. 

And knowledge, but by year and hour 
In reverence and in charity. 

cxv. 

Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And drown'd in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea. 
The flocks are whiter down the vale. 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea; 

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood ; that live their lives 

From land to land ; and in my breast 
Spring wakens too; and my regret 
Becomes an April violet. 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 

CXVI. 

Is it, then, regret for buried time 

That keenlier in sweet April wakes, 



IN MEMORIAM. 103 

And meets the year, and gives and takes 
The colors of the crescent prime? 

Not all: the songs, the stirring air, 
The life re^orient out of dust, 
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust 

In that which made the world so fair. 

Not all regret : the face will shine 

Upon me, while I muse alone ; 

And that dear voice, I once have known, 
Still speak to me of me and mine : 

Yet less of sorrow lives in me 

For days of happy commune dead ; 
Less yearning for the friendship fled, 

Than some strong bond which is to be. 

CXVII. 

O days and hours, your work is this 
To hold me from my proper place, 
A little while from his embrace, 

For fuller gain of after bliss: 

That out of distance might ensue 

Desire of nearness doubly sweet; 
And unto meeting when we meet, 

Delight a hundredfold accrue. 

For every grain of sand that runs. 

And every span of shade that steals, 
And every kiss of toothed wheels. 

And all the courses of the suns. 



104 IN MEMORIAM. 

CXVIII. 

Contemplate all this work of Time, 
The giant laboring in his youth ; 
Nor dream of human love and truth, 

As dying Nature's earth and lime; 

But trust that those we call the dead. 
Are breathers of an ampler day 
Forever nobler ends. They say, 

The solid earth whereon we tread 

In tracts of fluent heat began, 

And grew to seeming-random forms. 
The seeming prey of cyclic storms. 

Till at the last arose the man ; 

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, 
And herald of a higher race, 
And of himself in higher place. 

If so he type this work of time 

Within himself, from more to more; 
Or, crown 'd with attributes of woe 
Like glories, move his course, and show 

That life is not as idle ore. 

But iron dug from central gloom. 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 

To shape and use. Arise and fly 

The reelingf Faun, the sensual feast: 



IN MEMORIAM. 105 

Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die. 

CXIX. 

Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
So quickly, not as one that weeps 
I come once more; the city sleeps; 

I smell the meadow in the street; 

I hear a chirp of birds; I see 

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn 
A light-blue lane of early dawn, 

And think of early days and thee, 

And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, 

And bright the friendship of thine eye ; 
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 

I take the pressure of thine hand. 

CXX. 

I trust I have not wasted breath : 
I think we are not wholly brain. 
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, 

Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ; 

Not only cunning casts in clay : 

Let Science prove we are, and then 
What matters Science unto men, 

At least to me? I would not stay. 

Let him, the wiser man who springs 

Hereafter, up from childhood shape 

8 In Memoriam . 



106 IN MEMORIAM. 

His action like the greater ape, 
But I was born to other things. 

CXXI. 

Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun 

And ready, thou, to die with him, 
Thou watchest all things ever dim 

And dimmer, and a glory done : 

The team is loosen'd from the wain, 
The boat is drawn upon the shore ; 
Thou listenest to the closing door, 

And life is darken'd in the brain. 

Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night, 

By thee the world's great work is heard 
Beginning, and the wakeful bird; 

Behind thee comes the greater light: 

The market boat is on the stream. 

And voices hail it from the brink ; 
Thou hear'st the village hammer clink. 

And see'st the moving of the team. 

Sweet Hesper- Phosphor, double name 
For what is one, the first ; the last. 
Thou, like my present and my past. 

Thy place is changed ; thou art the same. 

CXXII. 

Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, 
While I rose up against my doom. 



IN MEMORIAM. lOT 

And yearn 'd to burst the folded gloom,. 
To bare the eternal Heavens again, 

To feel once more, in placid awe, 
The strong imagination roll 
A sphere of stars about my soul, 

In all her motion one with law ; 

If thou wert with me, and the grave 
Divide us not, be with me now. 
And enter in at breast and brow, 

Till all my blood, a fuller wave. 

Be quicken 'd with a livelier breath, 

And like an inconsiderate boy. 

As in the former flash of joy, 
I slip the thoughts of life and death; 

And all the breeze of Fancy blows. 
And every dew-drop paints a bow, 
The wizard lightnings deeply glow, 

And every thought breaks out a rose. 



CXXIII. 

There rolls the deep where grew the tree. 

O earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 

There where the long street roars, hath 
been 
The stillness of the central sea. 

The hills are shadows, and they flow 

From form to form, and nothing stands; 



108 IN MEMORIAM. 

They melt like mist, the solid lands 
Like clouds they shape themselves and 



o^O. 



But in my spirit will I dwell, 

And dream my dream, and hold it true; 

For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, 
I cannot think the thing farewell. 

CXXIV. 

Thait which we dare invoke to bless; 

Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; 

He, They, One, All; within, without; 
The Power in darkness whom we guess; 

I found Him not in world or sun. 

Or eagle's wing, or insect's e5^e; 

Nor thro' the questions men may try. 
The petty cobwebs we have spun : 

If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 

I heard a voice "believe no more," 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 

That tumbled in the Godless deep; 

A warmth within the breast would meU 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answer' d "I have felt." 

No, like a child in doubt and fear: 

But that blind clamor made me wise; 
Then was I as a child that cries, 

But, crying, knows his father near; 



IN MEMORIAM. 109 

And what I am beheld again 

What is, and no man understands; 
And out of darkness came the hands 

That reach thro' nature, moulding men. 

CXXV. 

Whatever I have said or sung, 

Some bitter notes my harp would give, 
Yea, tho' there often seem'd to live 

A contradiction on the tongue, 

Yet Hope had never lost her youth; 

She did but look through dimmer eyes: 
Or Love but play'd with gracious lies, 

Because he felt so fix'd in truth: 

And if the song were full of care, 

He breathed the spirit of the song ; 
And if the words were sweet and strong 

He set his royal signet there; 

Abiding with me till I sail 

To seek thee on the mystic deeps, 
And this electric force, that keeps 

A thousand pulses dancing, fail. 

CXXVI. 

Love is and was my Lord and King, 
And in his presence I attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend, 

Which every hour his couriers bring. 



110 IN MEMORIAM. 

Love is and was my King and Lord, 
And will be, tho' as yet I keep 
Within his court on earth, and sleep 

Encompass'd by his faithful guard. 

And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the worlds of space, 

In the deep night, that all is well. 

CXXVII. 

And all is well, tho' faith and form 
Besunder'd in the night of fear; 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 

A deeper voice across the storm, 

Proclaiming social truth shall spread, 
And justice, ev'n tho' thrice again 
The red fool-fury of the Seine 

Should pile her barricades with dead. 

But ill for him that wears a crown. 
And him, the lazar, in his rags; 
They tremble, the sustaining crags; 

The spires of ice are toppled down. 

And molten up, and roar in flood; 

The fortress crashes from on high. 
The brute earth lightens to the sky. 

And the great ^on sinks in blood, 

And compass'd by the fires of Hell; 

While thou, dear spirit, happy star, 



IN MEMORIAM. Ill 

O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, 
And smilest, knowing all is well. 

CXXVIII. 

The love that rose on stronger wings, 
Unpalsied when he met with Death, 
Is comrade of the lesser faith 

That sees the course of human things. 

No doubt vast eddies in the flood 

Of onward time shall yet be made, 
And throned races may degrade; 

Yet O ye mysteries of good, 

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, 
If all your office had to do 
With old results that look like new; 

If this were all your mission here, 

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword. 

To fool the crowd with glorious lies. 
To cleave a creed in sects and cries. 

To change the bearing of a word, 

To shift an arbitrary power, 

To cramp the student at his desk. 
To make old bareness picturesque 

And tuft with grass a feudal tower; 

Why then my scorn might well descend 
On you and yours. I see in part 
That all, as in some piece of art, 

Is toil co-operant to an end. 



112 IN ME MORI AM. 

CXXIX. 

Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, 
So far, so near in woe and weal ; 

loved the most, when most I feel 
There is a lower and a higher; 

Known and unknown; human, divine; 

Sweet hum.an hand and lips and eye ; 

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
Mine, mine, forever, ever mine; 

Strange friend, past, present, and to be; 

Loved deeplier, darklier understood; 

Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
And mingle all the world with thee. 

cxxx. 

Thy voice is on the rolling air; 

1 hear thee where the waters run ; 
Thou standest in the rising sun, 

And in the setting thou art fair. 

What art thou then? I cannot guess; 
But tho' I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power, 

I do not therefore love thee less: 

My love involves the love before; 
My love is vaster passion now 
Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, 

I seem to love thee more and more. 



IN MEMORIAM. 113 

Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 

I have thee still, and I rejoice; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice; 
I shall not lose thee tho' I die. 

CXXXI. 

O living- will that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shock, 

Rise in the spiritual rock. 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer 'd years 

To one that with us works, and trust. 

With faith that comes of self-control, 

The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved. 

And all we flow from, soul in soul. 

O true and tried, so well and long. 

Demand not thou a marriage lay; 
In that it is thy marriage day 

Is music more than any song. 

Nor have I felt so much of bliss 

Since first he told me that he loved 
A daughter of our house ; nor proved 

Since that dark day a day like this ; 

Tho' I since then have number'd o'er 

Some thrice three years: they went and 
came, 



114 IN MEMORIAM. 

Remade the blood and changed the frame, 
And yet is love not less, but more; 

No longer caring to embalm 

In dying songs a dead regret, 

But like a statue solid-set, 
And moulded in colossal calm. 

Regret is dead, but love is more 

Than in the summers that are flown. 
For I myself with these have grown 

To something greater than before ; 

Which makes appear the songs I made 
As echoes out of weaker times, 
As half but idle brawling rhymes. 

The sport of random sun and shade. 

But where is she, the bridal flower, 

That must be made a wife ere noon? 
She enters, glowing like the moon 

Of Eden on its bridal bower: 

On me she bends her blissful eyes 

And then on thee ; they meet thy look 
And brighten like the star that shook 

Betwixt the palms of paradise. 

O when her life was yet in bud. 

He too foretold the perfect rose. 

For thee she grew, for thee she grows 

For ever, and as fair as good. 

And thou art worthy ; full of power ; 
As gentle; liberal-minded, great. 



IN MEMORIAM. 115 

Consistent; wearing all that weight 
Of learning lightly like a flower. 

But now set out : the noon is near, 
And I must give away the bride; 
She fears not, or with thee beside 

And me behind her, will not fear. 

For I that danced her on my knee, 

That watch'd her on her nurse's arm. 
That shielded all her life from harm 

At last must part with her to thee; 

Now waiting to be made a wife, 

Her feet, my darling, on the dead ; 
Their pensive tablets round her head, 

And the most living words of life 

Breathed in her ear. The ring is on. 

The '*wilt thou" answer'd, and again 
The "wilt thou" ask'd, till out of twain 

Her sweet ''I will" has made you one. 

Now sign your names, which shall be read. 
Mute symbols of a joyful morn. 
By village eyes as yet unborn ; 

The names are sign'd, and overhead 

Begins the clash and clang that tells 

The joy to every wandering breeze; 
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees 

The dead leaf trembles to the bells. 

O happy hour, and happier hours 
Await them. Many a merry face 



116 IN MEMORIAM. 

Salutes them — maidens of the place, 
That pelt us in the porch with flowers. 

O happy hour, behold the bride 

V7ith him to whom her hand I gave. 
They leave the porch, they pass the grave 

That has to-day its sunny side. 

To-day the grave is bright for me, 

For them the light of life increased. 
Who stay to share the morning feast, 

Who rest to-night beside the sea. 

Let all my genial spirits advance 

To meet and greet a whiter sun ; 
My drooping memory will not shun 

The foaming grape of eastern France. 

It circles round, and fancy plays. 

And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom, 
As drinking health to bride and groom 

We wish them store of happy days. 

Nor count me all to blame if I 
Conjecture of a stiller guest. 
Perchance, perchance, among the rest. 

And, tho' in silence, wishing joy. 

But they must go, the time draws on, 

And those white- favor' d horses wait; 
They rise, but linger; it is late; 

Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. 



IN MEMORIAM. 117 

A shade falls on us like the dark 

From little cloudlets on the grass, 
But sweeps away as out we pass 

To range the woods, to roam the park, 

Discussing how their courtship grew, 
And talk of others that are wed, 
And how she look'd, and what he said, 

And back we come at fall of dew. 

Again the feast, the speech, the glee, 

The shade of passing thought, the wealth 
Of words and wit, the double health, 

The crowning cup, the three-times-three, 

And last the dance; — till I retire: 

Dumb is that tower which spake so loud. 
And high in heaven the streaming cloud, 

And on the downs a rising fire. 

And rise, O moon, from yonder down. 
Till over down and over dale 
All night the shining vapor sail 

And pass the silent-lighted town. 

The white-faced halls, the glancing rills, 
And catch at every mountain head. 
And o'er the friths that branch and spread 

Their sleeping silver thro' the hills; 

And touch with shade the bridal doors; 

With tender gloom the roof, the wall; 

And breaking let the splendor fall 
To spangle all the happy shores 



118 IN MEMORIAM. 

By which they rest, and ocean sounds, 
And, star and system rolling past, 
A soul shall draw from out the vast 

And strike his being into bounds, 

And, moved thro' life of lower phase, 
Results in man, be born and think. 
And act and love, a closer link 

Betwixt us and the crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 

On knowledge ; under whose command 
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand 

Is nature like an open book ; 

No longer half-akin to brute, 

For all we thought and loved and did, 
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed 

Of what in them in flower and fruit; 

Whereof the man, that with me trod 
This planet, was a noble type 
Appearing ere the times were ripe, 

That friend of mine who lives in God, 

That God, which ever live and loves. 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 

The original Preface to "The Lover's Tale" states 
that it v/as composed in my nineteenth year. Two 
only of the three parts then written were printed, when, 
feeling the imperfection of the poem, I withdrew it 
from the press. One of my friends however who, boy- 
like, admired the boy's work, distributed among our com- 
mon associates of that hour some copies of these two 
parts, without my knowledge, without the omissions 
and amendments' which I had in contemplation, and 
marred by the many misprints of the compositor. See- 
ing that these two parts have of late been mercilessly 
pirated, and that what I had deemed scarce worthy to 
live is not allowed to die, may I not be pardoned if I 
suffer the whole poem at last to come into the light — 
accompanied with a reprint of the sequel — •a work of my 
mature life — "The Golden Supper?" 

May, 1879. 

ARGUMENT. 

Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has 
been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavors 
to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the 
strange sequel. He speaks (in Parts II. and III.) of 
having been haunted by visions and the sound of bells, 
tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; 
but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the 
Event, and a witness to it completes the tale. 



Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, 
Filling with purple gloom the vacancies 
Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas 
119 



120 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Hung in mid-heaven, and lialf-vvay clown rare 

sails, 
White as white clouds, floated from skv to sky. 
Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, 
Like to a quiet mind in the loud world, 
Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea 
Sank pow^erless, as anger falls aside 
And withers on the breast of peaceful love ; 
Thou didst receive the growth of pines that 

fledged 
The hills that watch 'd thee, as Love watcheth 

Love, 
In thine owm essence, and delight thyself 
To make it wholly thine on sunny days. 
Keep thou thy name of "Lover's Bay." See, 

sirs. 
Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes 
The heart, and sometimes touches but one 

string 
That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes 
Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords 
To some old melody, begins to play 
That air which pleased her first. I feci thy 

breath ; 
I come, great Mistress of the ear and eye : 
Thy breath is of the pinewood; and tho' years 
Have hollow'd out a deep and stormy strait 
Betwixt the native land of Love and me. 
Breathe but a little on me, and the sail 
Will draw me to the rising of the sun. 
The lucid chambers of the morning star, 

And East of Life. 
Permit me, friend, I prythee, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 121 

To pass my hand across my brows, and muse 
On those dear hills, that never more will meet 
The sight that throbs and aches beneath my 

touch, 
As tho' there beat a heart in either eye; 
For when the outer lights are darken 'd thus, 
The memory's vision hath a keener edge. 
It grows upon me now — the semicircle 
Of dark-blue waters and the narrow fringe 
Of curving beach — its wreaths of dripping 

green — 
Its pale pink shells — the summerhouse aloft 
That open'd on the pines with doors of glass, 
A mountain nest — the pleasure-boat that 

rock'd, 
Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel, 
Upon the dappled dimplings of the wave, 
That blanch'd upon its side. 

O Love, O Hope! 
They come, they crowd upon me all at once — 
Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things, 
That sometimes on the horizon of the mind 
Lies folded, often sweeps athwart in storm — 
Flash upon flash they lighten thro' me — days 
Of dewy dawning and the amber eves 
When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I 
Were borne about the bay or safely moor'd 
Beneath a low-brow'd cavern, where the tide 
Plash'd, sapping its worn ribs; and all without 
The slowly-ridging rollers on the cliffs. 
Clash'd calling to each other, and thro' the 

arch 
Down those loud waters, like a setting star, 



122 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Mixt with the gorgeous west the lighthouse 

shone, 
And silver-smiling Venus ere she fell 
Would often loiter in her balmy blue, 
To crown it with herself. 



Here too, my love 
Wavered at anchor with me, when day hung 
From his mid-dome in Heaven's airy halls; 
Gleams of the water-circles as they broke, 
Flicker'd like doubtful smiles about her lips, 
Quiver*d a flying glory on her hair. 
Leapt like a passing thought across her eyes;" 
And mine with one that will not pass, till earth 
And heaven pass too, dwelt on my heaven, a 

face 
Most starry-fair, but kindled from within 
As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-hair'd, 

dark-eyed : 
Oh, such dark eyes! a single glance of them 
Will govern a whole life from birth to death, 
Careless of all things else, led on with light 
In trances and in visions: look at them. 
You lose yourself in utter ignorance; 
Yon cannot find their depth ; for they go back. 
And farther back, and still withdraw them- 
selves 
Quite into the deep soul, that evermore 
Fresh springing from her fountains in the 

brain, 
Still pouring thro' floods with redundant life 
Her narrow portals. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 123 

Trust me, long ago 
I should have died, if it were possible 
To die in gazing on that perfectness 
Which I do bear within me: I had died, 
But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb. 
Thine image, like a charm of light and strength 
Upon the waters, push'd me back again 
On these deserted sands of barren life. 
Tho' from the deep vault where the heart of 

Hope 
Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark — 
Forgetting how to render beautiful 
Her countenance with quick and healthful 

blood — 
Thou didst not sway me upward; could I 

perish 
While thou, a meteor of the sepulcher, 
t)idst swathe thyself all round Hope's quiet urn 
For ever? He, that saith it, hath o'erstept 
The slippery footing of his narrow wit, 
And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art 

light, 
To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers, 
And length of days, and immortality 
Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd. 
For Time and Grief abode too long with Life, 
And, like all other friends i' the world, at last 
They grew aweary of her fellowship : 
So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death, 
And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of 

Life; 
But thou didst sit alone in the inner house, 
A wakeful portress, and didst parle with 

Death.— 



124 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

*'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold;" 
So Death gave back, and would no further 

come. 
Yet is my life nor in the present time, 
Nor in the present place. To me alone, 
Push'd from his chair of regal heritage, 
The Present is the vassal of the Past: 
So that, in that I have lived, do I live, 
And cannot die, and am, in having been — 
A portion of the pleasant yesterday. 
Thrust forward on to-day and out of place; 
A body purneying onward, sick with toil, 
The weight as if of age upon my limbs. 
The grasp of hopeless grief about my heart, 
And all the senses weaken *d, save in that. 
Which long ago they had glean 'd and gar- 

ner'd up 
Into the granaries of memory — 
The clear brow, bulwark of the precious 

brain, 
Chink 'd as you see, and vSeam'd — and all the 

while 
The light soul twines and mingles with the 

growths 
Of vigorous early days, attracted, won. 
Married, made one with, molten into all 
The beautiful in Past of act or place, 
And like the all-enduring camel, driven 
Far from the diamond fountain by the palms, 
Who toils across the middle moonlit nights, 
Or when the white heats of the blinding 

noons 
Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps 
A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 125 

To Stay his feet from falling, and his spirit 
From bitterness of death. 

Ye ask me, friends, 
When I began to love. How should I tell you? 
Or from the after-fulness of my heart, 
Flow back again unto my slender spring 
And first of love, tho' every turn and depth 
Between is clearer in my life than all 
Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask. 
How should the broad and open flower tell 
What sort of bud it was, when, prest together 
In its green sheath, close-lapt in silken folds, 
It seem'd to keep its sweetness to itself. 
Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd? 
For young Life knows not when young Life 

was born, 
But takes it all for granted : neither Love, 
Warm in the heart, his cradle, can remember 
Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied. 
Looking on her that brought him to the light: 
Or as men know not when they fall asleep 
Into delicious dreams, our other life. 
So know I not when I began to love. 
This is my sum of knowledge — that my love 
Grew with myself — say rather, was my growth, 
My inward sap, the hold I have on earth, 
My outward circling air wherewith I breathe, 
Which yet upholds my life, and evermore 
Is to me daily life and daily death : 
For how should I have lived and not have 

loved? 
Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower, 
The color and the sweetness from the rose, 



126 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

And place them by themselves; or set apart 
Their motions and their brightness from the 

stars, 
And then point out the flower or the star? 
Or build a wall betwixt my life and love, 
And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus: 
In that I live I love; because I love 
I live: whate'er is fountain to the one 
Is fountain to the other; and whene'er 
Our God unknits the riddle of the one, 
There is no shade or fold of mystery 
Swathing the other. 

Many, many years 
(For they seem many and my most of life, 
And well I could have linger'd in that porch, 
So unproportion'd to the dwelling-place), 
In the Maydews of childhood, opposite 
The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together, 
Apart, alone together on those hills. 

Before he saw my day my father died, 
And he was happy that he saw it not; 
But I and the first daisy on his grave 
From the same clay into light at once. 
As Love and I do number equal years, 
So she, my love, is of an age with me. 
How like each other was the birth of each ! 
On the same morning, almost the same hour. 
Under the selfsame aspect of the stars 
(Oh falsehood of all starcraft!), we were born. 
How like each other was the birth of each ! 
The sister of my mother — she that bore 
Camilla close beneath her beating heart, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 127 

Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child, 

With its true-touched pulses in the flow 

And hourly visitation of the blood, 

Sent notes of preparation manifold, 

And mellow'd echoes of the outer world — 

My mother's sister, mother of my love, 

Who had a twofold claim upon my heart, 

One twofold mightier than the other mas, 

In giving so much beauty to the world. 

And so much wealth as God had charged her 

with — 
Loathing to put it from herself forever, 
Left her own life with it; and dying thus, 
Crown 'd with her highest act the placid face 
And breathless body of her good deeds past. 

So were we born, so orphan 'd. She was 

motherless 
And I without a father. So from each 
Of those two pillars which from earth uphold 
Our childhood, one had fallen away, and all 
The careful burthen of our tender years 
Trembled upon the other. He that gave 
Her life, to me delightfully fulfill 'd 
All lovingkindnesses, all offices 
Of watchful care and trembling tenderness. 
He waked for both : he pray'd for both : he 

slept 
Dreaming of both: nor was his love the less 
Because it was divided, and shot forth 
Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome 

shade, 
Wherein we nested sleeping or awake. 
And sang aloud the matin-song of life. 



128 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

She was my foster-sister: on one arm 
The flaxen ringlets of our infancies 
Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap 
Pillow'd us both: a common light of eyes 
Was on us as we lay: our baby lips, 
Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence 
The stream of life, one stream, one life, one 

blood, 
One sustenance, which, still as thought grew 

large, 
Still larger moulding all the house of thought, 
Made all our tastes and fancies like, perhaps — 
All — all but one; and strange to me, and 

sweet, 
Sweet thro' strange years to know that what- 
soe'er 
Our general mother meant for me alone. 
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us: 
So what was earliest mine in earliest life, 
I shared with her in whom myself remains. 

As was our childhood, so our infancy, 
They tell me, was a very miracle 
Of fellow-feeling and communion. 
They tell me that we would not be alone, — 
We cried when we were parted ; when I wept. 
Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, 
Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved 
The sound of one- another's voices more 
Than the gray cuckoo loves his name, and 

learn'd 
To lisp in tune together; that we slept 
In the same cradle always, face to face, 
Heart beating time to heart, lip pressins^ lip, 










/X 



-.1 



Made garlands of the self-same flower." — Page 131, 

]n Memoriam. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 129 

Folding each other, breathing on each other. 
Dreaming together (dreaming of each other 
They should have added), till the morning 

light 
Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane 
Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke 
To gaze upon each other. If this be true, 
At thought of which my whole soul languishes 
And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath — as 

tho' 
A man in some still garden should infuse/ 
Rich atar in the bosom of the rose, 
Till, drunk with its own wine, and overfull 
Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself. 
It fall on its own thorns — if this be true — 
And that way my wish leads me evermore 
Still to believe it — 'tis so sweet a thought, 
Why in the utter stillness of the soul 
Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell 
Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn, 
Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest harmony? 

O blossom'd portal of the lonely house, 
Green prelude, April promise, glad new-year 
Of Being, which with earliest violets 
And lavish carol of clear-throated larks 
Fill'd all the March of life! — I will not speak 

of thee; 
These have not seen thee, these can never 

know tliee, 
They cannot understand me. Pass we then 
A term of eighteen years. Ye v/ould but laugh, 
If I should tell you how I hoard in thought 
The faded rhymes and scraps of ancient crones, 

9 In Memoriam 



130 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Gray relics of the nurseries of the world, 
Which are as gems set in my memory, 
Because she learnt them with me; or what use 
To know her father left us just before 
The daffodil was blown? or how we found 
The dead man cast upon the shore? All this 
Seems to the quiet daylight of your minds 
But cloud and smoke, and in the dark of mine 
Is traced with flame. Move with me to the 
event. 

There came a glorious morning, such a one 
As dawns but once a season. Mercury 
On such a morning would have flung himself 
From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced 

wings 
To some tall mountain : when I said to her, 
**A day for Gods to stoop," she answered, 

"Ay, 
And men to soar:" for as that other gazed, 
Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud. 
The prophet and the chariot and the steeds, 
Suck'd into oneness like a little star. 
Were drunk into the inmost blue, we stood, 
When first we came from out the pines at 

noon. 
With hands for eaves, uplooking and almost 
AVaiting to see some blessed shape in heaven, 
So bathed we were in brilliance. Never yet 
Before or after have I known the spring 
Pour with such sudden deluges of light 
Into the middle summer; for that day 
Love, rising, shook his wings, and charged the 

winds 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 131 

With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound, 

and blew 
Fresh fire into the sun, and from within 
Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul 
Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far-off 
His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame 
Milder and pure. 

Thro' the rocks we wound: 
The great pine shook with lonely sounds of joy 
That came on the sea-wind. As mountain 

streams 
Our bloods ran free: the sunshine seem'd to 

brood 
More warmly on the heart than on the brow. 
We often paused, and, looking back, we saw 
The clefts and openings in the mountains 

fill'd 
With the blue valley and the glistening brooks. 
And all the low dark groves, a land of love ! 
A land of promise, a land of memory, 
A land of promise flowing with the milk 
And honey of delicious memories! 
And down to sea, and far as eye could ken, 
Each way from verge to verge a Holy Land, 
Still growing holier as you near'd the bay, 
For there the Temple stood. 

When we had reach 'd 
The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop 'd, 
I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows 
And mine made garlands of the selfsame 
flower. 



132 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Which she took smiling, and with my work 

thus 
Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she 

told me 
(For I remember all things) to let grow 
The flowers that run poison in their veins. 
She said, ''The evil flourish in the world. " 
Then playfully she gave herself the lie — 
"Nothing in nature is unbeautiful; 
So, brother, pluck and spare not. " So I wove 
Ev'n the dull-blooded poppy-stem, ''whose 

flower, 
Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise, 
Like to the wild youth of an evil prince, 
Is without sweetness, but who crowns himself 
Above the naked poisons of his heart 
In his old age." A graceful thought of hers 
Grav'n on my fancy! And oh, how like a 

nymph, 
A stately mountain nymph she look'd! how 

native 
Lai to the hills she trod on ! While I gazed 
My coronal slowly disentwined itself 
And fell between us both; tho' v/hile I gazed 
My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss 
That strike across the soul in prayer, and 

show us 
That we are surely heard. Methought a light 
Burst from the garland I had wov'n, and stood 
A solid glory on her bright black hair; 
A light methought broke from her dark, dark 

eyes, 
And shot itself into the singing winds; 
A mystic light flash'd ev'n from her white robe 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 133 

As from a glass in the sun, and fell about 
My footsteps on the mountains. 

Last we came 
To what our people call *'The Hill of Woe. " 
A bridge is there, that, look'd at from beneath 
Seems but a cobweb filament to link 
The yawning of an earthquake-cloven chasm. 
And thence one night, when all the winds were 

loud, 
A woful man (for so the story went) 
Had thrust his wife and child and dash'd him- 
self 
Into the dizzy depth below. Below, 
Fierce in the strength of far descent, a stream 
Flies with a shatter'd foam along the chasm. 

The path was perilous, loosely strown with 
crags : 
We mounted slowly; yet to both there came 
The joy of life in steepness overcome, 
And victories of ascent, and looking down 
On all that had look'd down on us; and joy 
In breathing nearer heaven ; and joy to me, 
High over all the azure-circled earth. 
To breathe with her as if in heaven itself; 
And more than joy that I to her became 
Her guardian and her angel, raising her 
Still higher, past all peril, until she saw 
Beneath her feet the region far away. 
Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows, 
Arise in open prospect — heath and hill. 
And hollow lined and wooded to the lips, 
And steep-down walls of battlemented rock 



134 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Gilded with broom, or shatter' d into spires, 
And glory of broad waters interfused, 
Whence rose as it were breath and steam of 

gold, 
And over all the great wood rioting 
And climbing, streak'd or starr'd at intervals 
With falling brook or blossom'd bush — and 

last, 
Framing the mighty landscape to the west, 
A purple range of mountain-cones, between 
Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding bursts 
The incorporate blaze of sun and sea. 

At length 
Descending from the point and standing both, 
There on the tremulous bridge, that from be- 
neath 
Had seem'd a gossamer filament up in air, 
We paused amid the splendor. All the west 
And ev'n unto the middle south was ribb'd 
And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun 

below, 
Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, 

shower'd down 
Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over 
That various wilderness a tissue of light 
Unparallel'd. On the other side, the moon, 
Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still, 
And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf. 
Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes 
To indue his lustres; most unloverlike. 
Since in his absence full of light and joy. 
And giving light to others. But this most, 
Next to her presence whom I loved so well, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 135 

Spoke loudly even into my inmost heart 
As to my outward hearing ; the loud stream. 
Forth issuing from his portals in the crag 
(A visable link unto the home of my heart). 
Ran amber toward the west, and nigh the sea 
Parting my own loved mountains was received 
Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy 
Of that small bay, which out to open main 
Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun. 
Spirit of Love ! that little hour was bound 
Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee : 
Thy fires from heaven had touch'd it and the 

earth 
They fell on became hallow'd evermore. 

We turn'd: our eyes met: hers were bright, 

and mine 
Were dim with floating tears, that shot the 

sunset 
In lightnings round me; and my name was 

borne 
Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has 

been 
A hallow'd memory like the names of old, 
A center'd, glory-circled memory. 
And a peculiar treasure, brooking not 
Exchange or currency; and in that hour 
A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist 
Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs, 
A moment, ere the onward whirlwind shatter 

it, 
Waver'd, and floated — which was less than 

Hope, 
Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope; 



138 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

But which was more and higher than all Hope, 
Because all other Hope had lovv^er aim; 
Even that this name to which her gracious lips 
Did lend such gentle utterance, this one name, 
In some obscure hereafter, might inwreathe 
(How lovelier, nobler then!) her life, her love, 
With my life, love, soul, spirit, and heart and 
strength. 



*' Brother," she said, "let this be call'd 

henceforth 
The Hill of Hope;" and I replied, "O sister, 
My will is one with thine; the Hill of Hope." 
Nevertheless, we did not change the name. 
I did not speak ; I could not speak my love, 
Love lieth deep : Love dwells not in lip-depths. 
Love wraps his wings on either side the heart, 
Constraining it with kisses close and warm. 
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts 
So that they pass not to the shrine of sound. 
Else had the life of that delighted hour 
Drunk in the largeness of the utterance 
Of Love; but how should Earthly measure 

mete 
The Heavenly-unmeasured or unlimited Love, 
Who scarce can tune his high majestic sense 
Unto the thundersong that wheels the spheres, 
Scarce living in the ^olian harmony, 
And flowing odor of the spacious air, 
Scarce housed within the circle of this Earth, 
Be cabin 'd up in words and syllables. 
Which pass with that which breathes them? 

Sooner Earth 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 137 

Might go round Heaven, and the strait girth of 

Time 
Inswath the fulness of Eternity, 
Than language grasp the infinite of Love. 

O day which did enwomb that happy hour, 
Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day! 
O Genius of that hour which dost uphold 
Thy coronal of glory like a God, 
Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen, 
Who walk before thee, ever turning round 
To gaze upon thee till their eyes are dim 
With dwelling on the light and depth of thine, 
Thy name is ever worship'd among hours! 
Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die. 
For bliss stood round me like the light of 

Heaven — 
Had I died then, I had not known the death ; 
Yea had the Power from whose right hand the 

light 
Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand 

floweth 
The Shadow of Death, perennial effluences, 
Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air, 
Somewhile the one must overflow the other; 
Then had he stemm'd my day with night, and 

driven 
My current to the fountain whence it sprang — 
Even his own abiding excellence — 
On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had 

fall'n 
Unfelt, and in this glory I had merged 
The other, like the sun I gazed upon, 
Which seeming for the moment due to death, 

10 In Memoriam 



138 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

And dipping his head low beneath the verge, 
Yet bearing round about him his own day, 
In confidence of unabated strength, 
Steppeth from Heaven to Heaven, from light 

to light. 
And holdeth his undimmed forehead far 
Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud. 

We trod the shadow of the downward hill ; 
We passed from light to dark. On the other side 
Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall, 
Which none have fathom 'd. If you go far in 
(The country people rumor) you may hear 
The moaning of the woman and the child. 
Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. 
I too have heard a sound — perchance of streams 
Running far on within it inmost halls, 
The home of darkness; but the cavern-mouth, 
Half overtrailed with a wanton weed. 
Gives birth to a brawling brook, that passing 

lightly 
Adown a natural stair of tangled roots. 
Is presently received in a sweet grave 
Of eglantines, a place of burial 
Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen, 
But taken with the sweetness of the place. 
It makes a constant bubbling melody 
That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down 
Spreads out a little lake, that, floating, leaves 
Low banks of yellow sand; and from the woods 
That belt it rise three dark, tall cypresses — 
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe, 
That men plant over graves. 



THE LOVER'S TALE, 139" 

Hither we came,. 
And sitting down upon the golden moss, 
Held converse sweet and low — low converse 

sweet, 
In which our voices bore least part. The wind 
Told a lovetale beside us, how he woo'd 
The waters, and the waters answering lisp'd 
To kisses of the wind, that, sick with love, 
Fainted at intervals, and grew again 
To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape 
Fancy so fair as is this memory. 
Methought all excellence that ever was 
Had drawn herself from many thousand years, 
And all the separate Edens of this earth. 
To center in this place and time. I listen'd, 
And her words stole with most prevailing 

sweetness 
Into my heart, as thronging fancies come 
To boys and girls when summer days are new, 
And soul and heart and body are all at ease: 
What marvel my Camilla told me all? 
It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place, 
And I was as the brother of her blood. 
And by that name I moved upon her breath ; 
Dear name, which had too much of nearness in 

it 
And heralded the distance of this time! 
At first her voice was very sweet and low. 
As if she were afraid of utterance ; 
But in the onward current of her speech 
(As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks 
Are fashion 'd by the channel which they keep), 
Her words did of their meaning borrow sound, 
Her cheek did catch the color of her words. 



140 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear; 
My heart paused — my raised eyelids would not 

fall, 
But still I kept my eyes upon the sky, 
I seem'd the only part of Time stood still, 
And saw the motion of all other things; 
While her words, syllable by syllable. 
Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear 
Fell; and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to 

speak ; 
But she spake on, for I did name no wish. 
What marvel my Camilla told me all? 
Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love — 
"Perchance," she said, " return 'd." Even 

then the stars 
Did tremble in their stations as I gazed; 
But she spake on, for I did name no wish, 
No wish — no hope. Hope was not wholly dead, 
But breathing hard at the approach of Death — 
Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine 
No longer in the dearest sense of mine — 
For all the secret of her inmost heart, 
And all the maiden empire of her mind, 
Lay like a map before me, and I saw 
There, where I hoped myself to reign as king, 
There, where that day I crown'd myself as 

king, 
There in my realm and even on my throne, 
Another! then it seem'd as tho' a link 
Of some tight chain within my inmost frame 
Was riven in twain ; that life I heeded not 
Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the 

grave. 
The darkness of the grave and utter night, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 141 

Did swallow up my vision ; at her feet, 
Even the feet of her I loved, I fell, 
Smit with exceedinof sorrow unto Death. 



Then had the earth beneath me yawning 

cloven 
With such a sound as when an iceberg splits 
From cope to base — had Heaven from all her 

doors, 
With all her golden thresholds clashing, roll'd 
Her heaviest thunder — I had lain as dead, 
Mute, blind and motionless as then I lay ; 
Dead, for henceforth there was no life for me! 
Mute, for henceforth what use were words to 

me! 
Blind, for the day was as the night to me ! 
The night to me was kinder than the day; 
The night in pity took away my day, 
Because my grief as yet was newly born 
Of eyes too weak to look upon the light ; 
And thro' the hasty notice of the ear 
Frail Life was startled from the tender love 
Of him she brooded over. Would I had lain 
Until the plaited ivy tress had wound 
'Round my worn limbs, and the wild brier had 

driven 
Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining brows, 
Leaning its roses on my faded eyes. 
The wind had blown above me, and the rain 
Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded snake 
Had nestled in this bosom-throne of Love, 
But I had been at rest for evermore. 



142 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

LoDg time entrancement held me. All too 
soon 
Like (like a wanton too-officious friend, 
Who will not hear denial, vain and rude 
With proffer of unwish'd-for services) 
Entering all the avenues of sense 
Past thro' into his citadel, the brain, 
With hated warmth of apprehensiveness. 
And first the chillness of the sprinkled brook 
Smote on my brows, and then I seem'd to hear 
Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears. 
Who with his head below the surface dropt 
Listens the muffled booming indistinct 
Of the confused floods, and dimly knows 
His head shall rise no more ; and then came in 
The white light of the weary moon above, 
Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. 
Was my sight drunk that it did shape to me 
Him who should own that name? Were it not 

well 
If so be that the echo of that name 
Ringing within the fancy had updrawn 
A fashion and a phantasm of the form 
It should attach to? Phantom! — had the ghast- 
liest 
That ever lusted for a body, sucking 
The foul steam of the grave to thicken by it, 
There in the shuddering moonlight brought its 

face 
And what it has for e3^es as close to mine 
As he did — better that than this, than he 
The friend, the neighbor, Lionel, the beloved, 
The loved, the lover, the happy Lionel, 
The low-voiced, tender-spirited Lionel, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 143 

All joy, to whom my agony was a joy, 
O how her choice did leap forth from his eyes! 
O how her love did clothe itself in smiles 
About his lips! and — not one moment's grace — 
Then when the effect weigh'd seas upon my 

head 
To come my way! to twit me with the cause ! 

Was not the land as free thro' all her ways 
To him as me? Was not ^lis wont to walk 
Between the going light and growing night? 
Had I not learnt my loss before he came? 
Could that be more because he came my way? 
Why should he not come my way if he would? 
And yet to-night, to-night — when all my wealth 
Flash 'd from me in a moment and I fell 
Beggar 'd forever — why should he come my 

way 
Robed in those robes of light I must not wear, 
With that great crown of beams about his 

brows — 
Come like an angel to a damned soul, 
To tell him of the bliss he had with God- 
Come like a careless and a greedy heir 
That scarce can wait the reading of the will 
Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood 
To be invaded rudely, and not rather 
A sacred, secret, unapproachable woe. 
Unspeakable? I was shut up with Grief; 
She took the body of mj^ past delight, 
Narded and swathed and balm'd it for herself, 
And laid it in a sepulchre of rock 
Never to rise again. I was led mute 
Into her temple like a sacrifice ; 



144 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

I was the High Priest in her holiest place, 
Not to be loudly broken in upon. 



Oh, friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these 

well-nigh 
O'erbore the limits of my brain: but he 
Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd. 
I thought it was an adder's fold, and once 
I strove to disengage myself, but fail'd, 
Being so feeble: she bent above me too; 
Wan was her cheek; for whatsoe'er of blight 
Lives in the dewy touch of pity had made 
The red rose there a pale one — and her eyes — 
I saw the moonlight glitter on their tears — 
And some few drops of that distressful rain 
Fell on m.y face, and her long ringlets moved, 
Drooping and beaten by the breeze, and 

brush 'd 
My fallen forehead in their to and fro, 
For in the sudden anguish of her heart 
Loosed from their simple thrall they had flow'd 

abroad. 
And floated on and parted round her neck, 
Mantling her form halfway. She, when I woke. 
Something she ask'd, I know not what, and 

ask'd, 
Unanswer'd, since I spake not; for the sound 
Of that dear voice so musically low, 
And now first heard v/ith any sense of pain, 
As it had taken life away before, 
Choked all the syllables, that strove to rise 
From my full heart. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 145 

The blissful lover, too, 
From his great hoard of happiness distill'd 
Some drops of solace ; like a vain rich man, 
That, having- ahvays prosper'd in the world. 
Folding his hands, deals comfortable words 
To hearts wounded forever; 5''et, in truth, 
Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase, 
Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd 
More to the inward than the outward ear. 
As rain of the midsummer midnight soft, 
Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green 
Of the dead spring: but mine was wholly dead. 
No bud, no leaf, no flower, no fruit for m.e. 
Yet who had done, or who had suffer'd wrong? 
And why was 1 to darken their pure love, 
If, as I found, they two did love each other, 
Because my own was darden'd? Why was I 
To cross between their happy star and them? 
To stand a shadow by their shining doors. 
And vex them with my darkness? Did I love 

her? 
Ye know that I did love her; to this present 
My full-orb'd love has waned not. Did I love 

her. 
And could I look upon her tearful eyes? 
What had she done to weep? Why should she 

weep? 
O innocent of spirit— let my heart 
Break rather — whom the gentlest airs of 

Heaven 
Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness. 
Her love did murder mine? What then? She 

deem'd 



10 



146 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

I wore a brother's mind: she call'dme brother: 
She told me all her love: she shall not weep. 

The brightness of a burning thought, awhile 
In battle with the glooms of my dark will, 
Moonlike emerged, and to itself lit up 
There on the depth of an unfathom'd woe 
Reflex of action. Starting up at once. 
As from a dismal dream of my own death, 
I, for I loved her, lost my love in Love; 
I, for I loved her, graspt the hand she lov'd. 
And laid it in her own, and sent my cry 
Thro' the blank night to Him who loving 

made 
The happy and the unhappy love, that He 
Would hold the hand of blessing over them, 
Lionel, the happy, and her, and her, his bride! 
Let them so love that men and boys may say, 
*'Lo! how they love each other!" till their love 
Shall ripen to a proverb, unto all 
Known, when their faces are forgot in the 

land — 
One golden dream of love, from which may 

death 
Awake them with heaven's music in a life 
More living to some happier happiness, 
Swallowing its precedent in victory. 
And as for me, Camilla, as for me, — 
The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew. 
They will but sicken the sick plant the more. 
Deem that I love thee but as brothers do. 
So shalt thou love me still as sisters do; 
Or if thou dream aught farther, dream but 

how 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 147 

I could have loved thee, had there been none 

else 
To love as lovers, loved again by thee. 

Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spake. 
When I beheld her weep so ruefully; 
For sure my love should ne'er indue the front 
And mask of Hate, who lives on other's moans. 
Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter 

droughts. 
And batten on her poisons? Love forbid! 
Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, 
And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love! 
O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears 
Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine 

image. 
The subject of thy power, be cold in her, 
Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source 
Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward 

flow. 
So Love, arraign 'd to judgment and to death, 
Received unto himself a part of blame, 
Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner, 
Who, when the woful sentence hath been past. 
And all the clearness of his fame hath gone 
Beneath the shadow of the curse of man. 
First falls asleep in swoon, wherefrom awaked, 
And looking round upon his tearful friends, 
Forthwith and in his agony conceives 
A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime — 
For whence without some guilt should such 

grief be? 

So died that hour, and fell into the abysm 
Of forms outworn, but not to me outworn. 



148 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Who never hail'd another — was there one? 
There might be one — one other, worth the life 
That made it sensible. So that hour died 
Like odor rapt into the winged wind 
Borne into alien lands and far away. 

There be some hearts so airily built, that 
they. 
They — when their love is wreck'd — if Love can 

wreck — 
On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly 
Above the perilous seas of Change and Chance ; 
Na}^, more, hold out the lights of cheerful- 
ness; 
As the tall ship, that many a dreary year 
Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea. 
All thro' the livelong hours of utter dark. 
Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave. 
Forme — what light, what gleam on those black 

ways 
Where Love could walk with banish'd Hope 
no more? 

It v/as ill-done to part you, Sisters fair; 
Love's arms were wreath'd about the neck of 

Hope, 
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her 

breath 
In that close kiss, and drank her whisper'd 

tales. 
They said that Love would die when Hope was 

gone. 
And Love mourn 'd long, and sorrow'd after 

Hope; 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 149 

At last she sought out Memory, and they trod 
The same old paths where Love had v/alk'd 

with Hope, 
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. 

II. 

From that time forth I would not see her 

more; 
But many weary moons I lived alone — 
Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. 
Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea 
All day I watch'd the floating isles of shade, 
And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands 
Insensibly I drew her name, until 
The meaning of the letters shot into 
My brain; anon the Vv^anton billow wash'd 
Them over, till they faded like my love. 
The hollow caverns heard me — the black 

brooks 
Of the midforest heard me — the soft winds, 
Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers, 
Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice 
Was all of thee: the merry linnet knew me, 
The squirrel knew me, and the dragon fly 
Shot by me like a flash of purple fire. 
The rough brier tore my bleeding palms; the 

hemlock, 
Brov/high, did strike my forehead as I past; 
Yet trod I not the wildflower in my path, 
Nor bruised the wild bird's egg. 

Was this the end? 
Why grew we then together in one plot? 



150 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Why fed we from one fountain? drew one sun? 
Why were our mothers branches of one stem? 
Why were we one in all things, save in that 
Where to have been one had been the cope at 

crown 
Of all I hoped and fear'd? — if that same near- 
ness 
Were father to this distance, and that one 
Vauntcourier to this double? if Affection 
Living slew Love and Sympathy hew'd out 
The bosom-sepulchre of Sympathy? 

Chiefly I sought the cavern and the hill 
Where last we roam'd together, for the sound 
Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the wind 
Came wooingly with woodbine smells. Some- 
times 
All day I sat within the cavern-mouth, 
Fixing my eyes on those three cypress-cones 
That spired above the wood; and with mad 

hand 
Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy-screen, 
I cast them in the noisy brook beneath, 
And watch'd them till they vanish'd from my 

sight 
Beneath the bower of wreathed eglantines: 
And all the fragments of the living rock 
(Huge blocks, which some old trembling of the 

world 
Had loosen'd from the mountain, till they fell 
Half-digging their own graves) these in my 

agony 
Did I make bare of all the golden moss, 
Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 151 

Had liveried them all over. In my brain 
The spirit seem'd to flag- from thought to 

thought, 
As moonlight wandering thro' a mist: my 

blood 
Crept like marsh drains thro' all my languid 

limbs ; 
The motions of my heart seem'd far within me, 
Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses; 
And yet it shook me, that my frame would 

shudder. 
As if 'twere drawn asunder by the rack. 
But over the deep graves of Hope and Fear, 
And all the broken palaces of the Past, 
Brooded our master-passion evermore, 
Like to a low- hung and a fiery sky 
Above some fair metropolis, earth-shock'd, — 
Hung round with ragged rims and burning 

folds,— 
Embathing all with wild and woful hues, 
Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses 
Of thundershaken columns indistinct, 
And fused together in the tyrannous light — 
Ruins, the ruin of all my life and me! 

Som.etimes I thought Camilla was no more, 
Some one had told me she was dead, and 

ask'd 
If I would see her burial: then I seem'd 
To rise, and through the forest-shadow borne 
With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down 
The steepy sea-bank, till I came upon 
The rear of a procession, curving round 
The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which 



152 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare 

A broad earth-sweeping- pall of whitest lawn. 

Wreathed round the bier with garlands : in the 

distance, 
From out the yellow woods upon the hill 
Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles 
Of a gra}^ steeple — thence at intervals 
A low bell tolling. All the pageantry, 
Save those six virgins which upheld the bier, 
Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black ; 
One walk'd abreast with me, and veil'd his 

brow. 
And he was loud in weeping and in praise 
Of her, we follow'd: a strong sympathy 
Shook all my soul : I flung myself upon him 
In tears and cries: I told him all my love, 
How I had loved her from the first; whereat 
He shrank and howl'd, and from his brow 

drew back 
His hand to push me from him ; and the face, 
The very face and form of Lionel 
Flash'd thro' my eyes into my innermost brain. 
And at his feet I seem'd to faint and fall, 
To fall and die away. I could not rise 
Albeit I strove to follow. They past on, 
The lordly Phantasms! in their floating folds 
They past and were no more : but I had fallen 
Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass. 

Alway the inaudible invisible thought, 
Artificer and subject, lord and slave. 
Shaped by the audible and visible. 
Moulded the audible and visible; 
All crisped sounds of wave and leaf and wind. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 153 

Flatter'd the fancy of my fading brain; 
The cloud pavilion'd element, the wood 
The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave, 
Storm, sunset, glows and glories of the moon 
Below black firs, when silent-creeping winds 
Laid the long nights in silver streaks and bars, 
Were wrought into the tissue of my dream : 
The moanings in the forest, the loud brook. 
Cries of the partridge like a rusty key 
Turn'd in a lock, owl-whoop and dorhawk- 
whirr 
Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep, 
And voices in the distance calling to me 
And in my vision bidding me dream on 
Like sounds without the twilight realm of 

dreams. 
Which wander round the bases of the hills, 
And murmer at the low-drop eaves of sleep, 
Half entering the portals. Oftentimes 
The vision had fair prelude, in the end 
Opening on darkness, stately vestibules 
To caves and shows of Death: whether the 

mind. 
With some revenge — even to itself unknown, — 
Made strange division of its suffering 
With her, whom to have suffering view'd had 

been 
Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed spirit. 
Being bunted in the Present, grew at length 
Prophetical and prescient of whate'er 
The future had in store: or that which most 
Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit 
Was of so wide a compass it took in 
All I had loved, and my dull agony. 



154 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Ideally to her transferr'd became 
Anguish intolerable. 

— The day waned; 
Alone I sat with her: about my brow 
Her warm breath floated in the utterance 
Of silver-corded tones: her lips were sunder'd 
V^ith smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in 

light 
Like morning from her eyes — her eloquent 

eyes, 
(As I have seen many a hundred times) 
Fill'd all with pure clear fire, thro' mine down 

rain'd 
Their spirit searching splendors. As a vision 
Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd 
In damp and dismal dungeons underground 
Confined on points of faith, when strength is 

shock 'd 
With torment, and expectancy of worse 
Upon the morrow, thro, the ragged walls, 
All unawares before his half-shut eyes, 
Comes in upon him in the dead of night, 
And with the excess of sweetness and of awe, 
Makes the heart tremble, and the sight run 

over 
Upon his steely gyves ; so those fair eyes 
Shone on my darkness, forms which ever stood 
Within the magic cirque of memory, 
Invisible but deathless, waiting still 
The edict of the will to assume 
The semblance of those rare realities 
Of which thev w^ere the mirrors. Now the 

li.eht 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 155 

Which was their life, burst through the cloud 

of thought 
Keen, irrepressible. 

It was a room 
Within the summer-house of which I spake, 
Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one 
A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow 
Clambering, the mast bent and the raving wind 
In her sail roaring. From the other day. 
Betwixt the close set ivies came a broad 
And solid beam of isolated light 
Crowed with driving atomies, and fell 
Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth 
Well-known well-loved. She drew it long ago 
Forth gazing on the waste and open sea, 
One morning when the upblown billows ran 
Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour'd 
Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms 
Colour and life : it was a bond and seal 
Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles; 
A monument of childhood and of love; 
The poesy of child ; my lost love 
Symbol 'd in storm. We gazed on it together 
In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart 
Grew closer to the other, and the eye 
Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like 
The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low-couch'd — 
A beauty which is death ; when all at once 
That painted vessel, as with inner life. 
Began to heave upon that painted sea; 
An earthquake, my loud heart-beats made the 

ground 
Reel under us, and all at once, soul, life 
And breath and motion, past and flow'd away 



156 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

To those unreal billows : round and round 
A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyres 
Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind driven 
Far thro' the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek'd; 
My heart was cloven with pain ; I wound my 

arms 
About her: we whirl'd giddily; the wind 
Sung; but I clasped her without fear: her 

weight 
Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes, 
And parted lips, which drank her breath, 

down-hung 
The jaws of Death: I, groaning, from me flung 
Her empty phantom : all the sway and whirl 
Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I 
Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and ever. 



IIL 



I came one day and sat among the stones 
Strewn in the entry of the moaning cave; 
A morning air, sweet after rain, ran over 
The rippling levels of the lake, and blew 
Coolness and moisture and all smells of bud 
And foliage from the dark and dripping woods 
Upon my fever'd brows that shook and throbb'd 
From temple unto temple. To what height 
The day had grown I knew not. Then came 

on me 
The hollow tolling of the bell, and all 
The vision of the bier. As heretofore 
I walked behind with one who veil'd his brow 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 157 

Methought by slow degrees the sullen bell 
Toll'd quicker, and the breakers on the shore 
Sloped into louder surf: those that went with 

me, 
And those that held the bier before my face. 
Moved with one spirit round about the bay, 
Trod swifter steps; and while I walk'd with 

these 
In marvel at that gradual change, I thought 
Four bells instead of one began to ring, 
Four merry bells, four merry marriage-bells. 
In clanging cadence jangling peal on peal — 
A long loud clash of rapid marriage-bells. 
Then those who led the van, and those in rear, 
Rush'd into dance, and like wild Bacchanals 
Fled onward to the steeple in the woods: 
I, too, was borne along and felt the blast 
Beat on my heated eyelids: all at once 
The front rank made a sudden halt; the bells 
Lapsed into frightful stillness ; the surge fell 
From thunder into whispers; those six maids 
With shrieks and ringing laughter on the sand 
Threw down the bier ; the woods upon the hill 
Waved with a sudden gust that, sweeping down, 
Took the edges of the pall, and blew it far 
Until it hung, a little silver cloud 
Over the sounding seas : I turned : my heart 
Shrank in me, like a snowflake in the hand. 
Waiting to see the settled countenance 
Of her I loved, adorn 'd with fading flowers. 
But she from out her death-like chrysalis, 
She from her bier, as into fresher life. 
My sister, and my cousin, and my love. 
Leapt lightly clad in bridal white— her hair 



158 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Studded with one rich Provence rose — a light 
Of smiling welcome round her lips — her eyes 
And cheeks as bright as when she climb'd the 

hill. 
One hand she reach 'd to those that came behind 
And while I mused nor yet endured to take 
So rich a prize, the man who stood with me 
Stept gaily forward, throwing down his robes, 
And claspt her hand in his: again the bells 
Jangled and clang'd: again the stormy surf 
Crash'd in the shingle: and the whirling rout 
Led by those two rush'd into dance, and fled 
Wind-footed to the steeple in the woods, 
Till they were swallow 'd in the leafy bowers, 
And I stood sole beside the vacant bier. 

There, there, my latest vision — then the event! 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 159 



IV. 

THE GOLDEN SUPPER.* 

(Another speaks. ) 

He flies the event : he leaves the event to me : 
Poor Julian — how he rush'daway; the bells, 
Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and 

heart — 
But cast a parting glance at me, you saw. 
As who should say "Continue," Well we had 
One golden hour — of triumph shall I say? 
Solace at least — before he left his home. 

Would you had seen him in that hour of his? 
He moved thro' all of it majestically — 
Restrain 'd himself quite to the close — but 
now — 

Whether they were his lady's marriage-bells, 
Or prophets of them in his fantasy, 
I never ask'd: but Lionel and the girl 
Were wedded, and our Julian came again 
Back to his mother's house among the pines. 
But these, their gloom, the mountains and the 

Bay, 
The whole land weigh 'd him down as ^tna 

does 

* This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio. 



160 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

The Giant of Mythology: he would go, 
Would leave the land for ever, and had gone 
Surely, but for a whisper, "Go not yet," 
Some warning — sent divineh/ — as it.seem'd 
By that which follow'd — but of this I deem 
As of the visions that he told — the event 
Glanced back upon them in his after life. 
And partly made them — tho' he knew it not. 
And thus he stay'd and would not look at her — 
No not for months: but, when the eleventh 

moon 
After their marriage lit the lover's Bay, 
Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and said, 
Would you could toll me out of life, but 

found — 
All softly as his mother broke it to him — 
A crueller reason than a crazy ear. 
For that low knell tolling his lady dead — 
Dead — and had lain three days without a pulse : 
All that look'd on her had pronounced her dead. 
And so they bore her (for in Julian's land 
They never nail a dumb head up in elm). 
Bore her free-faced to the free airs of heaven, 
And laid her in the vault of her own kin. 

What did he then? not die: he is here and 

hale — 
Not plunge headforemost from the mountain 

there, 
And leave the name of Lover's Leap: not he: 
He knew the meaning of the whisper now, 
Thought that he knew it. "This, I stav'd for 

this; 
O love, I have not seen you for so long. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 161 

Now, now, will I go down into the grave, 
I will be all alone with all I love, 
And kiss her on her lips, She is his no more: 
The dead returns to me, and I go down 
To kiss the dead." 

The fancy stirr'd him so 
He rose and went, and entering the dim vault, 
And, making there a sudden light; beheld 
All round about him that which all will be. 
The light was but a flash, and went again. 
Then at the far end of the vault he saw 
His lady with the moonlight on her face; 
Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars 
Of black and bands of silver, which the moon 
Struck from an open grating overhead 
High in the wall, and all the rest of her 
Drown 'd in the gloom and horror of the vault. 

"It was my wish," he said, "to pass, to sleep, 
To rest, to be with her — till the great day 
Peal'd on us with that music which rights all, 
And raised us hand in hand." And kneeling 

there 
Down in the dreadful dust that once was man. 
Dust, as he said, that once was loving hearts, 
Hearts that had beat with such a love as 

mine — 
Not such as mine, no, nor for such as hers — 
He softly put his arm. about her neck 
And kiss'd her more than once, till helpless 

death 
And silence made him bold — nay, but I wrong 

him, 

11 In Memoriam 



162 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

He reverenced his dear lady even in death ; 
But, placing his true hand upon her heart, 
**0, you warm heart," he moan'd, "not even 

death 
Can chill you all at once:" then starting, 

thought 
His dreams had come again. *'Do I wake or 

sleep? 
Or am I made immortal, or my love 
Mortal once more?" It beat — the heart — it 

beat: 
Faint — but it beat : at which his own began 
To pulse with such a vehemence that it 

drown'd 
The feebler motion underneath his hand. 
But when at last his doubts were satisfied, 
He raised her softly from the sepulchre, 
And, wrapping her all over with the cloak 
He came in, and now striding fast, and now 
Sitting a while to rest, but evermore 
Holding his golden burthen in his arms, 
So bore her thro' the solitary land 
Back to the mother's house where she was 

born. 



There the good mother's kindly ministering, 
With half a night's appliances, recall'd 
Her fluttering life : she rais'd an eye that ask'd 
*' Where?" till the things familiar to her youth 
Had made a silent answer: then she spoke 
*'Here! and how came I here?" and learning it 
(They told her somewhat rashly as I think) 
At once began to v/ander and to wail, 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 163 

"Ay, but you know that you must give me 

back : 
Send! bid him come;" but Lionel was away — 
Stung by his loss had vanish'd, none knew 

where. 
"He casts me out," she wept, "and goes" — a 

wail 
That seeming something, yet was nothing, born 
Not from believing mind, but shatter'd nerve, 
Yet haunting Julian, as her own reproof 
At some precipitance in her burial. 
Then, when her own true spirit had return'd, 
"Oh yes, and you," she said, "and none but 

you? 
For you have given me life and love again, 
And none but you yourself shall tell him of it, 
And you shall give me back when he returns." 
"Stay then a little,' answered Julian, "here. 
And keep yourself, none knowing, to yourself; 
And I will do your will. I may not stay, 
No, not an hour; but send me notice of him 
When he returns, and then will I return. 
And I will make a solemn offering of you 
To him you love. " And faintly she replied, 
"And I will do your will, and none shall 

know. ' ' 

Not know? with such a secret to be known. 
But all their house was old and loved them 

both, 
And all the house had known the loves of both ; 
Had died almost to serve them any way, 
And. all the land was waste and solitary: 
And then he rode away ; but after this, 



164 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

An hour or two, Camilla's travail came 
Upon her, and that day a boy was born, 
Heir of his face and land, to Lionel. 

And thus our lonely lover rode away, 
And pausing at a hostel in a marsh, 
There fever seized upon him : myself was then 
Traveling that land, and meant to rest an hour; 
And sitting down to such a base repast, 
It makes me angry yet to speak of it — 
I heard a groaning overhead, and climb'd 
The moulder'd stairs (for everything was vile) 
And in a loft, with none to wait on him, 
Found, as it seem'd, a skeleton alone, 
Raving of dead men's dust and beating hearts. 

A dismal hostel in a dismal land, 
A fiat malarian world of reed and rush ! 
But there from fever and my care of him 
Sprang up a friendship that may help us yet. 
For while we roam'd along the dreary coast. 
And waited for her message, piece by piece 
I learnt the drearier story of his life ; 
And, tho' he loved and honor'd Lionel, 
Found that the sudden wail his lady made 
Dwelt in his fancy did he know her worth, 
Her beauty even? should he not be taught, 
Ev'n by the price that others set upon it, 
The value of that jewel he had to guard? 
Suddenly came her notice and we past, 
I with our lover to his native Bay. 

This love is of the brain, the mind, the soul: 
That makes the sequel pure; tho' some of us 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 165 

Beginning; at the sequel know no more. 
Not such am I : and yet I say the bird 
That will not hear my call, however sweet, 
But if my neighbor whistle answers him — 
What matter? there are others in the Vv^ood. 
Yet when I saw her (and I thought him crazed, 
Tho' not with such a craziness as needs 
A cell and keeper), those dark eyes of hers — 
Oh! such dark eyes! and not her eyes alone, 
But all from these to where she touch 'd on 

earth, 
For such a craziness as Julian's look'd 
No less than one divine apology. 

So sweetly and so modestly she came 
To greet us, her young hero in her arms : 
"Kiss him," she said. "You gave me life 

again. 
He, but for you, had never seen it once. 
His other father you ! Kiss him, and then 
Forgive him, if his name be Julian too." 

Talk of lost hopes and broken heart! his 
own 
Sent such a flame into his face, I knew 
Some sudden vivid pleasure hit him there. 

But he was all the more resolved to go, 
And sent at once to Lionel, praying him 
By that great love they both had borne the 

dead. 
To come and revel for one hour with him 
Before he left the land for evermore; 
And then to friends — they were not many — 
who lived 



166 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Scatteringly about that lonely land of his, 
And bade them to a banquet of farewells. 

And Julian made a solemn feast: I never 
Sat at a costlier; for all round his hall 
From column on to column, as in a wood, 
Not such as here — an equatorial one, — 
Great garlands swung and blossom'd; and 

beneath, 
Heirlooms, and ancient miracles of Art, 
Chalice and salver, wines that, Heaven knows 

when. 
Had suck'd the fire of some forgotten sun, 
And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom, 
Yet glowing in a heart of ruby — cups 
Where nymph and god ran ever round in 

gold- 
Others of glass as costly — some with gems 
Movable and resettable at will. 
And trebling all the rest in value — Ah heavens ! 
Why need I tell you all? — suffice to say 
That whatsoever such a house as his, 
And his was old, has in it rare or fair 
Was brought before the guests : and they, the 

guests, 
Wonder'd at some strange light in Julian's eyes 
(1 told you that he had his golden hour). 
And such a feast, ill-suited as it seem'd 
To such a time, to Lionel's loss and his 
And that resolved self-exile from a land 
He never would revisit, such a feast. 
So rich, so strange, and stranger ev'n than rich, 
But rich as for the nuptials of a king. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 167 

And stranger yet, at one end of the hall 
Two great funeral curtains, looping down, 
Parted a little ere they met the floor, 
About a picture of his lady, taken 
Some years before, and falling hid the frame. 
And just above the parting was a lamp: 
So the sweet figure folded round with night 
Seem'd stepping out of darkness with a smile. 

Well then — our solemn feast — we ate and 
drank. 
And might — the wines being of such noble- 
ness — 
Have jested also, but for Julian's eyes, 
And something weird and wild about it all: 
What was it? for our lover seldom spoke. 
Scarce touch 'd the meats; but ever and anon 
A priceless goblet with a priceless wine 
Arising, show'd he drank beyond his use; 
And when the feast was near an end, he said : 

"There is a custom in the Orient, friends — 
I read of it in Persia — when a man 
Will honor those who feast with him, he brings 
And shows them whatsoever he accounts 
Of all his treasures the most beautiful, 
Gold, jewels, arms, whatever it may be. 
This custom " 

Pausing here a moment, all 
The guests broke in upon him with meeting 

hands 
And cries about the banquet — "Beautiful! 
Who could desire more beauty at a feast?" 



168 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

The lover answer 'd, "There is more than 

one 
Here sitting who desires it. Laud me not 
Before my time, but hear me to the close. 
This custom steps yet further when the guest 
Is loved and honor'd to the uttermost. 
For after he hath shown him gems or gold, 
He brings and sets before him in rich guise 
That which is thrice as beautiful as these, 
The beauty that is dearest to his heart — 
*0 my heart's lord, would I could show you,' 

he says, 
*Ev'n my heart too.' And I propose to-night 
To show you what is dearest to my heart. 
And my heart too. 

"But solve me first a doubt. 
I knew a man, nor many years ago; 
He had a faithful servant, one who loved 
His master more than all on earth beside. 
He falling sick, and seeming close on death, 
His master would not wait until he died, 
But bad his menials bear him from the door, 
And leave him in the public way to die. 
I knew another, not so long ago. 
Who found the dying servant, took him home, 
And fed, and cherish'd him, and saved his life. 
I ask you now, should this first master claim 
His service, whom does it belong to? him 
Who thrust him out, or him who saved his 
life?" 

This question, so flung down before the 
guests, 



THE LOVER^S TALE. 169 

And balanced either way by each, at length 
When some were doubtful how the law would 

hold, 
Was handed over by consent of all 
To one who had not spoken, Lionel. 

Fair speech was his, and delicate of phrase. 
And he beginning languidly — his loss 
Weigh'd on him yet — but warming as he went, 
Glanced at the point of law, to pass it by. 
Affirming that as long as either lived, 
By all the laws of love and gratefulness. 
The service of the one so saved was due 
All to the saver — adding, with a smile, 
The first for many weeks — a semi-smile 
As at a strong conclusion — "body and soul 
And life and limbs, all his to work his will." 

Then Julian made a secret sign to me 
To bring Camilla down before them all. 
And crossing her own picture as she came, 
And looking as much lovelier as herself 
Is lovelier than all others — on her head 
A diamond circlet, and from under this 
A veil, that seemed no more than gilded air, 
Flying by each fine ear, an Eastern gauze 
With seeds of gold — so, with that grace of hers. 
Slow-moving as a wave against the wind, 
That flings a mist behind it in the sun — 
And bearing high in arms the mighty babe, 
The younger Julian, who himself was crown'd 
With roses, none so rosy as himself — 
And over all her babe and her the jevv^els 
Of many generations of his house 

12 In Memoriam 



170 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

Sparkled and flash'd, for he had decked them 

out 
As for a solemn sacrifice of love — 
So she came in : — I am long in telling it, 
I never yet beheld a thing so strange, 
Sad, sweet, and strange together — floated in — 
While all the guests in mute amazement rose — 
And slowly pacing to the middle hall, 
Before the board, there paused and stood, her 

breast 
Hard-heaving, and her eyes upon her feet, 
Not daring yet to glance at Lionel. 
But him she carried, him nor lights nor feast 
Dazed or amazed, nor eyes of men ; who cared 
Only to use his own, and staring wide 
And hungering for the gilt and jewell'd world 
About him, look'd, as he is like to prove, 
When Julian goes, the lord of all he saw. 

"My guests," said Julian: **you are honor'd 
now 
E'en to the uttermost: in her behold 
Of all my treasures the most beautiful. 
Of all things upon earth the dearest to me." 
Then waving us a sign to seat ourselves. 
Led his dear lady to a chair of state. 
And I, by Lionel sitting, saw his face 
Fire, and dead ashes and all fire again 
Thrice in a second, felt him tremble too, 
And heard him muttering, *'So like, so like; 
She never had a sister. I knew none. 
Some cousin of his and hers — O God, so like!" 
And then he suddenly ask'd her if she were. 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 171" 

She shook, and cast her eyes down, and was 

dumb. 
And then some other question'd if she came 
From foreign lands, and still she did not speak. 
Another, if the boy were hers: but she 
To all their queries answer'd not a word. 
Which made the amazement more, till one of 

them 
Said, shuddering, "Her spectre!" But his 

friend 
Replied, in half a whisper, *'Not at least 
The spectre that will speak if spoken to. 
Terrible pity, if one so beautiful 
Prove, as I almost dread to find her, dumb!" 

But Julian, sitting by her, answer'd all: 
"She is but dumb, because in her you see 
That faithful servant whom we spoke about, 
Obedient to her second master now; 
Which will not last. 
I have here to-night a guest 
So bound to me by common love and loss — 
What! shall I bind him more? in his behalf, 
Shall I exceed the Persian, giving him 
That which of all things is the dearest to me, 
Not only showing? and he himself pronounced 
That my rich gift is wholly mine to give. 

"Now all be dumb, and promise all of you 
Not to break in on what I say by word 
Or whisper, while I show you all my heart." 
And then began the story of his love 
As here to-day, but not so wordily — 



172 THE LOVER'S TALE. 

The passionate moment would not suffer 

that- 
Past thro' his visions to the burial; thence 
Down to this last strange hour in his own 

hall; 
And then rose up, and with him all his guests 
Once more as by enchantment; all but he, 
Lionel, who fain had risen, but fell again, 
And sat as if in chains — to whom he said: 

"Take my free gift, my cousin, for your wife; 
And were it only for the giver's sake, 
And tho' she seem so like the one you lost, 
Yet cast her not away so suddenly. 
Lest there be none left here to bring her back: 
I leave this land forever." Here he ceased. 

Then taking his dear lady by one hand, 
And bearing on one arm the noble babe, 
He slowly brought them both to Lionel. 
And there the widower husband and dead Vv'ife 
Rush'd each at each with a cry, that rather 

seem'd 
For some new death than for a life renew'd; 
Whereat the very babe began to wail ; 
At once they turn'd, and caught and brought 

him in 
To their charm'd circle, and, half killing him 
With kisses, round him closed and claspt again. 
But Lionel, when at last he freed himself 
From wife and child, and lifted up a face 
All over-glowing with the sun of life, 
And love, and boundless thanks — the sight of 

this 
So frighted our good friend, that turning to me 



THE LOVER'S TALE. 173 

And saying, "It is over: let us go" — 
There were our horses ready at the doors — 
We bade them no farewell, but mounting these 
He past for ever from his native land ; 
And I with him, my Julian, back to mine. 



TO 

ALFRED TENNYSON, 

MY GRANDSON. 

Golden-hair'd Ally whose name is one with mine. 

Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new wine. 

Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine, 

O little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine, 

Glorious poet who never hast written a line, 

Laugh, for the name at the head of my verse is thine. 

May'st thou never be wrong'd by the name that is mine ! 



175 



BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS. 



THE FIRST QUARREL. 
(in the isle of wight.) 
I. 

"Wait a little," you say, "you are sure it'll all 

come right," 
But the boy was born i' trouble, an' looks so 

wan an' so white: 
Wait! an' once I ha' waited — I hadn't to wait 

for long. 
Now I wait, wait, wait for Harry. — No, no, 

you are doing me wrong ! 
Harry and I were married, the boy can hold 

up his head, 
The boy was: born in wedlock, but after my 

man was dead; 
I ha' worked for him fifteen years, an' I work 

an' I wait to the end. 
I am all alone in the world, an' you are my 

only friend. 

II. 

Doctor, if you can wait, I'll tell you the tale o* 

my life. 
When Harry an' I were children, he call'd me 
his own little wife ; 
177 
12 



178 THE FIRST QUARREL. 

1 was happy when I was with him, an' sorry 
when he was away, 

An' when we play'd together, I loved him bet- 
ter than play ; 

He workt me the daisy chain — he made me the 
cowslip ball, 

He fought the boys that were rude, an' I loved 
him better than all. 

Passionate girl tho' I was, an' often at home 
in disgrace, 

I never could quarrel with Harry — I had but 
to look in his face. 

III. 

There w^as a farmer in Dorset of Harry's kin, 

that had need 
Of a good stout lad at his farm; he sent, an' 

the father agreed ; 
So Harry was bound to the Dorsetshire farm 

for years an* for years; 
I walked with him down to the quay, poor lad, 

an' we parted in tears. 
The boat was beginning to move, we heard 

them a-ringing the bell, 
"I'll never love any but you, God bless you, 

my own little Nell." 

IV. 

I was a child, an' he was a child, an' he came 

to harm; 
There was a girl, a hussy, that workt with him 

up at the farm, 
One had deceived her an' left her alone with 

her sin an' her shame, 



THE FIRST QUARREL. 179 

And SO she was wicked with Harry; the girl 
was the most to blame. 



V. 

And years went over till I that was little had 

grown so tall, 
The men would say of the maids, "Our Nelly's 

the flower of 'em all." 
I didn't take heed o' them, but I taught myself 

all I could 
To make a good wife for Harry, when Harry 

came home for good. 

VI. 

Often I seem'd unhappy, and often as happy, 

too. 
For I heard it abroad in the fields, "I'll never 

love any but you;" 
"I'll never love any but you," the morning 

song of the lark, 
"I'll never love any but you," the nightingale's 

hymn in the dark. 

VII. 

And Harry came home at last, but he look'd 

at me sidelong and shy, 
Vext me a bit. till he told m.e that so many 

years had gone by, 
I had grown so handsome and tall — that I 

might ha' forgot him somehow — 
For he thought — there were other lads — he was 

fear'd to look at me now. 



180 THE FIRST QUARREL. 

YIII. 

Hard was the frost in the field, we were mar- 
ried o' Christmas day. 

Married among the red berries, an' all as 
merry as May — 

Those were the pleasant times, my house an' 
my man were my pride, 

We seem'd like ships i' the Channel a-sailing 
with wind an' tide. 

IX. 

But work was scant in the Isle, tho' he tried 

the villages round. 
So Harry went over the Solent to see if work 

could be found; 
An' he wrote, "I ha' six weeks' work, little 

wife, so far as 1 know; 
I'll come for an hour to-morrow, an' kiss you 

before I go." 

X. 

So I set to righting the house, for wasn't he 
coming that day? 

An' I hit on an old deal-box that was push'd 
in a corner away, 

It was full of old odds an' ends, an' a letter 
along wi' the rest, 

I had better ha' put my naked hand in a hor- 
net's nest. 

XI. 

"Sweetheart" — this was the letter — this was 
the letter I read — 



THE FIRST QUARREL. 181 

*'You promised to find me work near you, an' 

I wish I was dead — 
Didn't you kiss me an' promise? you haven't 

done it, my lad, 
An' I almost died o' your going away, an' I 

wish that I had." 

XII. 

I, too, wish that I had— in the pleasant times 

that had past, 
Before I quarrel 'd with Harry — my quarrel — 

the first an' the last. 

xui. 

For Harry came in, an' I flung him the letter 

that drove me wild 
An' he told me all at once, as simple as any 

child, 
*'What can it matter, my lass, what I did wi' 

my single life? 
I ha' been as true to you as ever a man to his 

wife; 
An' she wasn't one o' the worst." "Then," I 

said, "I'm none o' the best." 
An' he smiled at me, "Ain't you, my love? 

Come, come, little wife, let it rest! 
The man isn't like the woman, no need to make 

such a stir." 
But he anger'd me all the more, an' I said, 

"You were keeping with her, 
When I was a-loving you all along an' the same 

as before." 
An' he didn't speak for a while, an' he anger'd 

me more and more. 



182 THE FIRST QUARREL. 

Then he patted my hand in his gentle way» 

*'Let bygones be!" 
''Bygones! you kept yours hush'd," I said, 

"when you married me! 
By-gones ma' be come-agains; an' she — in her 

shame an' her sin — 
You'll have her to nurse my child, if I die o' 

my lying in ! 
You'll make her its second mother! I hate her 

— an' I hate you!" 
Ah, Harry, my man, you had better ha' beaten 

me black an' blue 
Than ha' spoken as kind as you did, when I 

were so crazy wi' spite, 
"Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill all 

come right." 

XIV. 

An' he took three turns in the rain, an' I 

watch'd him, an', when he came in 
I felt that my heart w^as hard, he was all wet 

thro' to the skin, 
An' I never said "off wi' the wet," I never 

said "on wi' the dry," 
So I knew my heart was hard, when he came 

to bid me good-bye. 
"You said that you hated me, Ellen, but that 

isn't true, you know; 
I am going to leave you a bit — you'll kiss me 

before I go?" 

XV. 

"Going! you're going to her — kiss her — if you 
will," I said,— 



THE FIRST QUARREL. 183 

I was near my time wi' the boy, Imust ha' 

been light i' my head — 
"I had sooner be cursed than kiss'd!" — I didn't 

know well what I meant, 
But I turn'd my face from him, an* he turn'd 

his face an' he went. 

XVI. 

And then he sent me a letter, "I've gotten my 

work to do; 
You wouldn't kiss me, my lass, an' I never 

loved any but you ; 
I am sorry for all the quarrel an' sorry for 

what she wrote, 
I ha' six weeks' work in Jersey an' go to-night 

by the boat." 

XVII. 

An' the wind began to rise, an* I thought of 

him out at sea. 
An' I felt I had been to blame; he was always 

kind to me. 
"Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill all 

come right" — 
An' the boat went down that night — the boat 

went down that night. 



184 RIZPAH. 



RIZPAH. 

17—. 
I. 

Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land 

and sea — 
And Willy's voice in the v/ind, "O mother, 

come out to me. " 
Why should he call me to-night, when he 

knows that I cannot go? 
For the downs are as bright as day, and the 

full moon stares at the snow. 

II. 

We should be seen, my dear; they would spy 

us out of the town. 
The loud black nights for us, and the storm 

rushing over the down, 
W^hen I cannot see my own hand, but am led 

by the creak of the chain, 
And grovel and grope for my son till I find 

myself drenched with the rain. 

III. 

Anything fallen again? nay — what was there 

left to fall? 
I have taken them home, I have number 'd the 

bones, I have hidden them all. 



RIZPAH. 185 

What am I saying? and what are you? do you 

come as a spy? 
Falls? what falls? who knows? As the tree falls 

so must it lie. 

IV. 

Who let her in? how long has she been? you — 
what have you heard? 

Why did you sit so quiet? you never have 
spoken a word. 

O — to pray w^ith me — yes — a lady — none of 
their spies — 

But the night has crept into my heart, and be- 
gun to darken my eyes. 



Ah — you, that have lived so soft, what should 
you know of the night, 

The blast and the burning shame and the bit- 
ter frost and the fright? 

I have done it, while you were asleep — you 
were only made for the day. 

I have gather'd my baby together — and now 
you may go your way. 

VI. 

Nay — for it's kind of you, Madam, to sit by an 

old dying wife, 
But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only 

an hour of life. 
I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he went 

out to die. 
*'They dared me to do it," he said, and he 

never has told me a lie. 



186 RIZPAH. 

I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when 

he was but a child — 
*'The farmer dared me to do it," he said; he 

was always so wild — 
And idle — and couldn't be idle — my Will — he 

never could rest. 
The King should have made him a soldier, he 

would have been one of his best. 

VII. 

But he lived with a lot of wild mates, and they 

never would let him be good; 
They swore that he dare not rob the mail, and 

he swore that he would ; 
And he took no life, but he took one purse, 

and when all was done 
He flung it among his fellows — I'll none of it, 

said my son. 

VIII. 

I came into court to the Judge and the lawyers. 

I told them my tale, 
God's own truth — but they kill'd him, they 

kill'd him for robbing the mail. 
They hang'd him in chains for a show — we 

had aways borne a good name — 
To be hang'd for a thief — and then put away — 

isn't that enough shame? 
Dust to dust— low down — let us hide! but they 

set him so high 
That all the ships of the world could stare at 

him, passing by. 
God 'ill pardon the hell-back raven and hor- 
rible fowls of the air. 



RIZPAH. 187 

But not the black heart of the lawyer who 
kill'd him and hang'd him there. 

IX. 

And the jailer forced me away. I had bid him 
my last good-bye; 

They had fasten'd the door of his cell. "O 
mother!" I heard him cry, 

I couldn't get back tho' I tried, he had some- 
thing further to say. 

And now I never shall know it. The jailer 
forced me away. 

X. 

Then since I couldn't but hear that cry of my 

boy that was dead, 
They seized me and shut me up; they fasten'd 

me down on my bed. 
*' Mother, O mother!" — he call'd in the dark to 

me year after year — 
They beat me for that, they beat me — you 

know that I couldn't but hear; 
And then at the last they found I had grown 

so stupid and still 
They let me abroad again — but the creatures 

had worked their will. 

XI. 

Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of my 

bone was left — 
I stole them all from the lawyers — and you, 

will you call it a theft? — 
My baby, the bones that had suck'd me, the 

bones that had laughed and had cried — 



188 RIZPAH. 

Theirs? O no! they are mine — not theirs — 
they had moved in my side. 

XII. 

Do you think I was scared by the bones? I 

kiss'd em, I buried 'em all — 
I can't dig deep, I am old — in the night by the 

churchyard wall. 
My Willy 'ill rise up whole when the trumpet 

of judgment 'ill sound, 
But I charge you never to say that I laid him 

in holy ground. 

XIII. 

They would scratch him up — they would hang 

him again on the cursed tree. 
Sin? O yes — we are sinners, I know — let all 

that be, 
And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's good 

will toward men — 
"Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord" — 

let me hear it again ; 
"Full of compassion and mercy — long-suffer- 
ing." Yes, O yes! 
For the lawyer is born but to murder — the 

Savior lives but to bless. 
He'll never put on the black cap except for the 

worst of the worst, 
And the first may be last — I have heard it in 

church — and the last may be first. 
Suffering — O long-suffering— yes, as the Lord 

must know. 
Year after year in the mist and the wind and 

the shower and the snow. 



RIZPAH. 189 

XIV. 

Heard, have you? what? they have told you 

he never repented his sin 
How do they know it? are they his mother? 

are you of his kin? 
Heard! have you ever heard, when the storm 

on the downs began, 
The wind that 'ill wail like a child and the sea 

that '11 moan like a man? 

XV. 

Election, Election and Reprobation— it's all 

very well, 
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not 

find him in Hell. 
For I cared so much for my boy that the Lord 

has look'd into my care, 
And He means me I'm sure to be happy with 

Willy, I know not where. 

XVI. 

And if he be lost— but to save my soul, that is 

all your desire : 
Do you think that I care for my soul if my 

boy be gone to the fire? 
I have been with God in the dark — go, go, 

you may leave me alone — 
You never have borne a child— you are just as 

hard as a stone. 

XVII. 

Madam, I beg your pardon ! I think that you 
mean to be kind, 



190 RIZPAH. 

But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy's 

voice in the wind — 
The snow and the sky so bright — he used but 

to call in the dark, 
And he calls to me now from the church, and 

not from the gibbet — for hark ! 
Nay — you can hear it yourself — it is coming — 

shaking the walls — 
Willy — the moon's in a cloud Good- night. 

I am going. He calls. 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 191 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 

I. 

Waait till our Sally cooms in, fur thou mun a* 

sights* to tell. 
Eh, but I be maain glad to seea tha sa 'arty 

an' well. 
**Cast awaay on a disolut land wi' a vartical 

soonf!" 
Strange fur to goa fur to think what saailors a' 

seean an' a'doon; 
*'Summat to drink — sa' 'ot?" I 'a nowt but 

Adam's wine: 
What's the 'eat o' this little 'ill-side to the 'eat 

o' the line? 

II. 

"What's i' tha bottle a-stanning theer?" I'll 

tell tha. Gin. 
But if thou wants thy grog, tha mun goa fur it 

down to the inn. 

* The vowels ai, pronounced separately though in the 
closest conjunction, best render the sound of the long / 
and J/ in this dialect. But since such words as craiin\ 
daim\ what, ai (I), etc., look awkward except in a page 
of express phonetics, I have thought it better to leave 
the simple / andy, and to trust that my readers will give 
them the broader pronunciation. 

f The 00 short as in "wood." 



192 THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 

Naay — fur I be maain-glad, but thaw tha was 

iver sa dry, 
Thou gits naw gin fro' the bottle theer, an' I'll 

tell tha why. 

III. 
Mea an' thy sister was married, when wur it? 

back-end o' June, 
Ten years sin', and wa' greed as well as a 

fiddle i' tune: 
I could fettle and clump owd boots and shoes 

wi' the best on 'em all, 
As fer as fro' Thursby thurn hup to Harmsby 

and Hutterby Hall. 
We was busy as beeas i' the bloom an' as 

'appy as 'art could think, 
An' then the babby wur burn, and then I 

taakes to the drink. 

IV. 

An' I weant gaainsaay it, my lad, thaw I be 

hafe shaamed on it now, 
We could sing a good song at the Plow, we 

could sing a good song at the Plow ; 
Thaw once of a frosty night I slither'd an' 

hurted my buck,* 
An* I coom'd neck-and-crop soomtimes slaape 

down i' the squad an' the muck: 
An' once I fowt wi' the Tailaor — not hafe ov a 

man, my lad — 
Fur he scrawm'd an' scratted my faace like a 

cat, an it maade 'er sa mad 
That Sally she turn'd a tongue-banger, f an' 

raated ma, "Sottin' thy braains 

* Hip. t Scold. 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 193 

Guzzlin' an' soakin' an' smoakin' an' hawmin'* 

about i' the laanes, 
Soa sow-droonk that tha doesn not touch thy 

'at to the vSquire;" 
An* a look'd cock-eyed at my noase an' I 

seead 'im a-gittin' o' fire: 
But sin' I wur hallus i' liquor an' hallus as 

droonk as a king, 
Foalks coostom flitted awaay like a kite wi' a 

brokken string. 



An' Sally she wesh'd foalks' cloaths to keep 

the wolf fro' the door, 
Eh, but the moor she riled me, she druv me to 

drink the moor. 
Fur I fun', when 'er back wur turn'd, wheer 

Sally's owd stockin' wur 'id, 
An' I grabb'd the munny she maade, and I 

wear'd it o' liquor, I did. 

VI. 

An' one night I cooms 'oam like a bull gotten 

loose at a faair. 
An' she wur'a-waaitin' fo'mma, an' cryin' and 

tearin' 'er 'aair, 
An' I tummled athurt the craadle an' swear'd 

as I'd break ivry stick 
O' furnitur 'ere i' the 'ouse, an' I gied our 

vSally a kick, 
An' I mash'd the taables an' chairs, an' she 

an' the babby beal'd,! 

* Lounging. f Bellowed, cried out. 

13 la Memoriam 



194 THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 

Fur I knaw'd naw moor what I did nor a mor- 
tal beast o' the feald. 

VII, 

An' when I waaked i' the murnin' I seead that 

our Sally went laamed 
Cos'o' the kick as I gied 'er, an' I wur dreadful 

ashaamed ; 
An' Sally wur sloomy* an' dragle taaled in 

an owd turn gown, 
An' the babby's faace wurn't wesh'd an' the 

'ole 'ouse hupside down. 

VIII. 

An' then I minded our Sally so pratty an' 

neat an' sweeat, 
Straat as a pole an' clean as a flower fro' cad 

to feeat: 
An' then I minded the fust kiss I gied 'er by 

Thursby thurn ; 
Theer wur a lark a-singin' 'is best of a Sun- 
day at mum, 
Couldn't see 'im, we 'eard 'im a-mountin' oop 

'igher an' 'igher, 
An' then 'e turn'd to the sun, an' 'e shined 

like a sparkle o' fire. 
*' Doesn't tha see 'im, " she axes, "furl can 

see 'im?" an' I 
Seead nobbut the smile o' the sun as danced 

in 'er pratty blue eye; 
An' I says "I mun gie tha a kiss," an' Sally 

says "Noa, thou moant, " 

* Sluggish, out of spirits. 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 195 

But I gied 'er a kiss, an' then anoother, an' 
Sally says '*doant!" 

IX. 

An' when we coom'd into Meeatin', at fust she 

wur all in a tew, 
But, arter we sing'd the 'ymn togither like 

birds on a beugh ; 
An' Muggins 'e preach'd o' Hell-fire an' the 

loov o' God fur men. 
An' then upo' coomin' awaay Sally gied me a 

kiss ov 'ersen. 

X. 

Heer wur a fall fro' a kiss to a kick like Saatan 

as fell 
Down out o' heaven i' Hell-fire — thaw theer's 

na drinkin' i' Hell; 
Mea fur to kick our Sally as kep the wolf fro' 

the door, 
All along o' the drink, fur I loov'd 'er as well 

as afoor. 

XI. 

Sa like a graat num-cumpus I blubber'd 

awaay o' the bed — 
"Weant niver do it naw moor;" an' Sally 

looakt up an' she said, 
"I'll upowd it* tha weant; thou'rt like the 

rest o' the men, 
Thou'll goa sniiBn' about the tap till tha does 

it agean. 

* I'll uphold it. 



196 THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 

Ther's thy hennemy, man, an' I knaws, as 
knaws tha sa well, 

That, if tha seeas 'im an' smells 'im tha' 11 f oi- 
ler 'im slick into Hell." 

XII. 

"Naay, " says I, "fur I weant goa sniffin' 

about the tap." 
"Weant tha?" she says, an' mysen I thowt i' 

mysen "mayhap." 
"Noa:" an' I started awaay like a shot, an' 

down to the Hinn, 
An' I browt what tha seeas stannin* theer, 

yon big black bottle o' gin. 

XIII. 

"That caps owt,*" says Sally, an' saw she be- 
gins to cry. 

But T puts it inter'er 'ands an' I says to 'er, 
"Sally," says I, 

"Stan' 'im theer i' the naame o' the Lord an' 
the power ov 'is Graace, 

Stan' 'im theer, fur I'll look my hennemy 
strait i' the faace, 

Stan' 'im theer i' the winder, an' let ma look 
at 'im then, 

'E seeams naw moor nor watter, an' 'e's the 
Divil's oan sen." 

XIV. 

An' I wur down i* tha mouth, couldn't do naw 
work an' all, 

* That's beyond everything. 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER 197 

Nasty an' snaggy an' sliaaky, an' poonch'd my 

'and wi' the hawl, 
But she wur a power o' coomfut, an' sattled 

'ersen o' my knee, 
An' coaxd an' coodled me oop till agean I 

feel'd mysen free. 

XV. 

An' Sally she tell'd it about, an' foalk stood a- 
gawmin'* in. 

As thaw it wur summat bewitch'd instead of a 
quart o' gin ; 

An' some on 'em said it wur watter — an' I wur 
chousin' the wife. 

For I couldn't 'owd 'ands off gin, wur it nob- 
but to saave my life; 

An' blacksmith 'e strips me the thick ov 'is 
airm, an 'e shaws it to me, 

"Feeal thou this! thou can't graw this upo' 
watter!" says he. 

An' Doctor 'e calls o' Sunday an' just as can- 
dles was lit, 

*'Thou moant do it," he says, "tha mun break 
'im off bit by bit." 

"Thou'rt but a Methody-man," says Parson, 
and laays down 'is 'at, 

An' 'e points to the bottle o' gin, "but I re- 
specks tha fur that;" 

An' Squire, his oan very sen, walks down fro' 
the 'All to see. 

An' 'e spanks 'is 'and into mine, "fur I re- 
specks tha," says 'e; 

* Staring vacantly. 



198 THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 

An' coostom agean draw'd in like a wind fro* 

far an' wide, 
And browt me the boots to be cobbled fro' 

hafe the coontryside. 

XVI. 

An' theer 'e stans an' theer 'e shall stan to 

my dying daay; 
I 'a gotten to loov 'im agean in anoother kind 

of aawaay, 
Proud on 'im, like, my lad, an' I keeaps 'im 

clean an' bright, 
Loovs 'im, an' roobs 'im, an' doosts 'im, an' 

puts 'im back i' the light. 

XVII. 

Would'nt a pint a' sarved as well as a quart? 

Naw doubt: 
But I liked a bigger feller to fight wi' an* fowt 

it out. 
Fine an* meller *e mun be by this, if I cared 

to taaste, 
But I moant, my lad, and I weant, fur I'd feal 

mysen clean disgraaced. 

XVIII. 

An' once I said to the Missis, "My lass, when 

I cooms to die, 
Smash the bottle to smithers, the Divil's in 

'im," said I. 
But arter I changed my mind, an' if Sally be 

left aloan, 
I'll hev 'im a-buried wi'mma an' taake *im 

afoor the Throan. 



THE NORTHERN COBBLER. 199 



XIX. 

Coom thou 'eer — yon laady a-steppin' along 

the streeat, 
Does'nt tha knaw *er — sa pratty, an' feat, an* 

neat, an' sweeat? 
Look at the cloaths on 'er back, thebbe am- 

most spick-span-new, 
An' Tommy's faace be as fresh as a codlin 

wesh'd i* the dew. 

XX. 

'Ere be our Sally an' Tommy, an* we be a- 

goin' to dine, 
Baacon an' taates, an' a beslings-puddin'* an* 

Adam's wine; 
But if tha wants ony grog tha mun goa fur it 

down to the Hinn, 
Pur I weant shed a drop on 'is blooad, no, not 

fur Sally's oan kin. 

* A pudding made with the first milk of the cow after 
calving. 



200 THE REVENGE. 



THE REVENGE. 

A BALLAD OF THE FLEET. 
L 

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville 

lay, 
And a pinnace, like a flutter'dbird, came flying 

from far away: 
*' Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted 

fifty-three!" 
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: '"Fore 

God I am no coward ; 
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are 

out of gear, 
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but 

follow quick. 
We are six ships of the line ; can we fight with 

fifty-three?" 



Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know 

you are no coward; 
You fly them for a moment to fight with them 

again. 
But I've ninety men and more that are lying 

sick ashore. 
I should count myself the coward if I left them, 

my Lord Howard, 




The battle-thunder broke from them all." — Page 203. 

In Mumoriam. 



THE REVENGE. 201 

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of 
Spain." 

III. 

So Lord Howard past av/ay with five ships of 

war that day, 
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent sum- 
mer heaven ; 
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men 

from the land 
Very carefully and slow, 
Men of Bideford in Devon, 
And we laid them on the ballast down below ; 
For we brought them all aboard, 
And they blest him in their pain, that they 

were not left to Spain, 
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory 

of the Lord. 

IV. 

He had only a hundred seamen to work the 
ship and to fight, 

And he sailed away from Flores till the Span- 
iard came in sight, 

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the 
weather bow. 

"Shall we fight or shall we fly? 

Good Sir Richard, tell us now, 

For to fight is but to die! 

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun 
be set." 

And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good 
English men. 

14 In Memoriam 



202 THE REVENGE. 

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children 

of the devil, 
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil 

yet." 



Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we 

roar'd a hurrah, and so 
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart 

of the foe, 
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her 

ninety sick below; 
For half of their fleet to the right and half to 

the left were seen, 
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long 
sea-lane between. 

VI. 

Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from 

their decks and laugh'd. 
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the 

mad little craft 
Running on and on, till delay'd 
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of 

fifteen hundred tons. 
And up-shadowing high above us with her 

yawning tiers of guns, 
Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd. 

VII. 

And while now the great San Philip hung 

above us like a cloud 
Whence the thunderbolt will fall 
Long and loud, 



THE REVENGE. 203^ 

Four galleons drew away 

From the Spanish fleet that day, 

And two upon the larboard and two upon the" 

starboard lay, 
And the battle-thunder broke from them all. 

VIII. 

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought 

herself and went 
Having that within her womb that had left her 

ill content; 
And the rest they came aboard us, and they 

fought us hand to hand. 
For a dozen times they came with their pikes 

and musqueteers. 
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog 

that shakes his ears 
When he leaps from the water to the land. 

IX. 

And the sun went down, and the stars came 

out far over the summer sea, 
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one 

and the fifty-three. 
Ship after ship the whole night long, their high- 
built galleons came. 
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her 

battle-thunder and flame; 
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew 

back with her dead and her shame. 
For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, 

and so could fight us no more — 
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the 

world before? 



204 THE REVENGE. 



For he said "Fight on! fight on!" 

Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; 

And it chanced that, when half of the short 

summer night was gone, 
With a grisly wound to be drest he had left 

the deck, 
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it 

suddenly dead, 
And himself he was wounded again in the side 

and the head, 
-And he said '* Fight on! fight on!" 

XI. 

And the night went down, and the sun smiled 
out far over the summer sea, 

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay 
round us all in a ring; 

But they dared not touch us again, for they 
fear'd that we still could sting. 

So they v/atch'd what the end would be. 

And we had not fought them in vain, 

But in perilous plight were we, 

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, 

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life 

In the crash of the cannonades and the des- 
perate strife ; 

And the sick men down in the hold were most 
of them stark and cold, 

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the 
powder was all of it spent; 

And the masts and the rigging were lying 
over the side; 



THE REVENGE. 205 

But Sir Richard cried in his English pride, 
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a 

night 
As may never be fought again ! 
We have won great glory, my men ! 
And a day less or more 
At sea or ashore, 
We die — does it matter when? 
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner — sink her, 

split her in twain! 
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands 

of Spain!" 

XII. 

And the gunner said "Ay, ay," but the sea- 
men made reply: 

"We have children, we have wives, 

And the Lord hath spared our lives. 

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we 
yield, to let us go ; 

We shall live to fight again and to strike 
another blow." 

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded 
to the foe. 

XIII. 

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship 

bore him then. 
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir 

Richard caught at last, 
And they praised him to his face with their 

courtly foreign grace; 
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 
"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a 

valiant man and true ; 



-206 THE REVENGE. 

I have only done my duty as a man is bound 

to do: 
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville 

die!" 
And he fell upon their decks, and he died. 



XIV. 

And they stared at the dead that had been so 

valiant and true, 
And had holden the power and glory of Spain 

so cheap 
That he dared her with one little ship and his 

English few; 
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught 

they knew, 
But they sank his body with honor down into 

the deep. 
And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier 

alien crew, 
And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd 

for her own ; 
When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd 

awoke from sleep, 
And the water began to heave and the weather 

to moan, 
And or ever that evening ended a great gale 

blew, 
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an 

earthquake grew, 
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and 

their masts and their flags. 



THE REVENGE. 207 

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the 
shot-shatter'd navy of Spain, 

And the little Revenge herself went down by 
the island crags 

To be lost evermore in the main. 



208 THE SISTERS. 



THE SISTERS. 

They have left the doors ajar; and by their 

clash, 
And prelude on the keys, I know the song, 
Their favorite — which I call "The Tables 

Turned." 
Evelyn begins it "O diviner Air." 

EVELYN. 

O diviner Air, 

Thro' the heat, the drowth, the dust, the glare, 

Far from out the west in shadowing showers, 

Over all the meadow baked and bare, 

Making fresh and fair 

All the bowers and the flowers, 

Fainting flowers, faded bowers, 

Over all this weary world of ours. 

Breathe, diviner Air! 

A sweet voice that — you scarce could better 

that. 
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn. 

EDITH. 

O diviner light, 

Thro' the cloud that roofs our noon with night, 

Thro' the blotting mist, the blinding showers. 

Far from out a sky for ever bright, 

Over all the woodland's flooded bowers, 



THE SISTERS. 209 

Over all the meadow's drowning flowers, 
Over all this ruin'd world of ours, 
Break, diviner light! 

Marvelously like, their voices — and them- 
selves ! 
Tho' one is somewhat deeper than the other, 
As one is somewhat graver than the other — 
Edith than Evelyn. Your good Uncle, whom 
You count the father of your fortune, longs 
For this alliance: let me ask you then, 
Which voice most takes you? for I do not doubt 
Being a watchful parent, you are taken 
With one or other: tho' sometimes I fear 
You may be flickering, fluttering in a doubt 
Between the two — which must not be — which 

might 
Be death to one : they both are beautiful : 
Evelyn is gayer, wittier, prettier, says 
The common voice, if one may trust it: she? 
No! but the paler and the graver, Edith. 
Woo her and gain her then : no wavering, boy ! 
The graver is perhaps the one for you 
Who jest and laugh so easily and so well. 
For love will go by contrast, as by likes. 

No sisters ever prized each other more. 
Not so: their mother and her sister loved 
More passionately still. 

But that my best 
And oldest friend, your Uncle, wishes it. 
And that I knov/ you worthy everyway 
To be my son, I might, perchance, be loath 
To part them, or part from them: and yet one 

14 



210 THE SISTERS. 

Should marry, or all the broad lands in your 

view 
From this bay window — which our house has 

held 
Three hundred years — will pass collaterally. 

My father with a child on either knee, 
A hand upon the head of either child, 
Smoothing their locks, as golden as his own 
Were silver, "get them wedded" would he say. 
And once my prattling Edith ask'd hin> 

*'why?" 
**Ay, why?" said he, '*for why should I go 

lame?" 
Then told them of his wars, and of his wound. 
For see — this wine — the grape from whence it 

flow'd 
Was blackening on the slopes of Portugal, 
When that brave soldier, down the terrible 

ridge 
Plunged in the last fierce charge at Waterloo, 
And caught the laming bullet. He left me 

thTs 
Which yet retains a memory of its youth, 
As I of mine, and my first passion. Come! 
Here's to your happy union with my child! 

Yet must you change your name : no fault 

of mine! 
You say that you can do it as willingly 
As birds make ready for their bridal-time 
By change of feather: for all that, my boy, 
Some birds are sick and sullen when they 

moult 



THE SISTERS. 211 

An old and worthy name ! but mine that stirr'd 
Among our civil wars and earlier too 
Among the Roses, the more venerable. 
I care not for a name — no fault of mine. 
Once more — a happier marriage than my own! 

You see yon Lombard poplar on the plain. 
The highway running by it leaves a breadth 
Of sward to left and right, where, long ago, 
One bright May morning in a world of song, 
I lay at leisure, watching overhead 
The aerial poplar wave, an amber spire. 

I dozed ; I woke. An open landaulet 
Whirl'd by, which, after it had past me, show'd 
Turning my way, the loveliest face on earth. 
The face of one there sitting opposite. 
On whom I brought a strange unhappiness, 
That time I did not see. 

Love at first sight 
May seem — with goodly rhyme and reason for 

it- 
Possible — at first glimpse, and for a face 
Gone in a moment — strange. Yet once, when 

first 
I came on lake Llanberris in the dark, 
A moonless night with storm — one lightning- 
fork 
Flash'd out the lake; and tho' I loiter'd there 
The full day after, yet in retrospect 
That less than momentary thunder sketch 
Of lake and mountain conquers all the day. 



212 THE SISTERS. 

The Sun himself has limn'd the face for me. 
Not quite so quickly, no, nor half as well. 
For look you here — the shadows are too deep, 
And like the critic's blurring comment make 
The veriest beauties of the work appear 
The darkest faults: the sweet eyes frown: the 

lips 
Seem but a gash. My sole memorial 
Of Edith — no, the other, — both indeed. 

So that bright face was fiash'd thro' sense 

and soul 
And by the poplar vanish 'd — to be found 
Long after, as it seem'd, beneath the tall 
Tree-bowers, and those long-sweeping beechen 

boughs 
Of our New Forest. I was there alone; 
The phantom of the whirling landaulet 
For ever past me by: when one quick peal 
Of laughter drew me thro' the glimmering 

glades 
Down to the snowlike sparkle of a cloth 
On fern and foxglove. Lo, the face again, 
My Rosalind in this Arden — Edith — all 
One bloom of youth, health, beauty, happiness, 
And moved to merriment at a passing jest. 

There one of those about her knowing me 
Call'd me to join them; so with these I spent 
What seem'd my crowning hour, my day of 
days. 

I woo'd her then, nor unsuccessfully, 
The worse for her, for me! was I content? 



THE SISTERS. 213 

Ay — no, not quite; for now and then I thought 

Laziness, vague love-longings, the bright May, 

Had made a heated haze to magnify 

The charm of Edith — that a man's ideal 

Is high in Heaven, and lodged with Plato's 

God 
Not findable here — content, and not content, 
In some such fashion as a man may be 
That having had the portrait of his friend 
Drawn by an artist, looks at it and says, 
*'Good! very like! not altogether he." 

As yet I had not bound myself by words, 
Only, believing I loved Edith, made 
Edith love me. Then came the day when I, 
Flattering myself that all my doubts were 

fools 
Born of the fool this Age that doubts of all — 
Not I that day of Edith's love or mine — 
Had braced my purpose to declare myself: 
I stood upon the stairs of Paradise. 
The golden gates would open at a word. 
I spoke it — told her of my passion, seen 
And lost and found again, had got so far. 
Had caught her hand, her eyelids fell — I heard 
Wheels, and a noise of welcome at the doors — 
On a sudden after two Italian years 
Had set the blossom of her health again, 
The younger sister, Evelyn, enter'd — there, 
There was the face, and altogether she. 
The mother fell about the daughter's neck. 
The sisters closed in one another's arms, 
Their people throng' d about them from the 

hall. 



214 THE SISTERS, 

And in the thick of question and reply 
I fled the house, driven by one angel face, 
And all the Furies. 

I was bound to her; 
I could not free myself in honor — Bound 
Not by the sounded letter of the word, 
But counter-pressures of the yielded hand 
That timorously and faintly echoed mine, 
Quick blushes, the sweet dwelling of her eyes 
Upon me when she thought I did not see — 
Were these not bonds? nay, nay, but could I 

wed her. 
Loving the other? do her that great wrong? 
Had I not dream'd I lov'd her yestermorn? 
Had I not known where Love, at first a fear, 
Grew after marriage to full height and form? 
Yet after marriage, that mock-sister there — 
Brother-in-law — the fiery nearness of it — 
Unlawful and disloyal brotherhood — 
What end but darkness could ensvie from this 
For all the three? So Love and Honor jarr'd 
Tho' Love and Honor join'd to raise the full 
High-tide of doubt that sway'd me up and 

down 
Advancing nor retreating. 

Edith wrote : 
* ' My mother bids me ask, " (I did not tell you — 
A widow with less guile than many a child. 
God help the Vv^rinkled children that are Christ's 
As well as the plump cheek — she wrought us 

harm, 
Poor soul, not knowing) — "are you ill?" (so ran 



THE SISTERS. 215 

The letter) **you have not been here of late. 
You will not find me here. At last I go 
On that long-promised visit to the North. 
I told your wayside stor}^ to my mother 
And Evelyn. She remembers you. Farewell. 
Pray come and see my mother. Almost blind 
With ever-growing cataract, yet she thinks 
She sees you when she hears. Again farewell. " 

Cold words from one I had hoped to warm so 
far 
That I could stamp my image on her heart! 
"Pray come and see my mother, and farewell. " 
Cold, but as welcome as free airs of heaven 
After a dungeon's closeness. Selfish, strange! 
What dwarfs are men! my strangled vanity 
Utter'd a stifled cry — to have vext myself 
And all in vain for her — cold heart or none — 
No bride for me. Yet so my path was clear 
To win the sister. 

Whom I woo'd and won, 
For Evelyn knew not of my former suit, 
Because the simple mother work'd upon 
By Edith pray'd me not to whisper of it. 
And Edith would be bridesmaid on the day. 

But on that day, not being all at ease, 
I from the altar glancing back upon her, 
Before the first "I will," was utter'd, saw 
The bridesmaid pale, statuelike, passionless — 
"No harm, no harm," I turn'd again, and 

placed 
My ring upon the finger of my bride. 

So, when we parted, Edith spoke no word. 



216 THE SISTERS. 

She wept no tear, but round my Evelyn clung 
In utter silence for so long, I thought 
*'What, will she never set her sister free?" 

We left her, happy each in each, and then, 
As tho' the happiness of each in each 
Were not enough, must fain have torrents, 

lakes. 
Hills, the great things of Nature and the fair. 
To lift us as it were from commonplace, 
And help us to our joy. Better have sent 
Our Edith thro' the glories of the earth. 
To change with her horizon, if true Love 
Were not his own imperial all-in-all. 

Far off we went. My God, I would not live 
Save that I think this gross hard-seeming world 
Is our misshaping vision of the Powers, 
Behind the world, that make our griefs our 
gains. 

For on the dark night of our marriage- day 
The great Tragedian, that had quench 'd herself 
In that assumption of the bridesmaid — she 
That loved me — our true Edith — her brain 

broke 
With over-acting, till she rose and fled 
Beneath a pitiless rush of Autumn rain 
To the deaf church — to be let in — to pray 
Before that altar — so I think ; and there 
They found her beating the hard Protestant 

doors. 
She died and she was buried ere we knew. 

I learnt it first. I had to speak. At once 



THE SISTERS. 217 

The bright quick smile of Evelyn, that had 

sunn'd 
The morning of our marriage, past away: 
And on our hom.e-return the daily want 
Of Edith in the house, the garden, still 
Haunted us like her ghost; and by-and-by, 
Either from that necessity for talk 
Which lives with blindness, or plain innocence 
Of nature, or desire, that her lost child 
Should earn from both the praise of heroism, 
The mother broke her promise to the dead. 
And told the living daughter with what love 
Edith had welcomed my brief wooing of her. 
And all her sweet self-sacrifice and death. 

Henceforth that mystic bond betwixt the 

twins — 
Did I not tell you they were twins? — prevail'd 
So far that no caress could win my wife 
Back to that passionate answer of full heart 
I had from her at first. Not that her love, 
Tho' scarce as great as Edith's power of love. 
Had lessen'd, but the mother's garrulous wail 
For ever woke the unhappy Past again. 
Till that dead bridesmaid meant to be my 

bride. 
Put forth cold hands between us, and I fear'd 
The very fountains of her life were chill'd; 
So took her thence, and brought her here, and 

here 
She bore a child, whom reverently we call'd 
Edith ; and in the second year was born 
A second — this I named from her own self 



218 THE SISTERS. 

Evelyn ; then two weeks — no more — she joined, 
In and beyond the grave, that one she loved. 

Now in this quiet of declining life, 
Thro' dreams by night and trances of the day, 
The sisters glide about me hand in hand, 
Both beautiful alike, nor can I tell 
One from the otner, no, nor care to tell 
One from the other, only know they come, 
They smile upon me, till, remembering all 
The love they both have borne me, and the love 
I bore them both — divided as I am 
From either by the stillness of the grave — 
I know not which of these I love the best. 

But you love Edith ; and her own true eyes 
Are traitors to her; our quick Evelyn — 
The merrier, prettier, wittier, as they talk, 
And not without good reason, my good son — 
Is yet untouch 'd; and I that hold them both 
Dearest of all things — well, I am not sure — 
But if there lie a preference either way, 
And in the rich vocabulary of Love 
"Most dearest" be a true superlative — 
I think I likewise love your Edith most. 



THE VILLAGE WIFE. 219 



THE VILLAGE WIFE; OR, THE EN- 
TAIL.* 



'Ouse-keeper sent tha my lass, fur New Squire 

coom'd last night. 
Butter an' heg-gs — yis — yis. I'll goa wi' tha 

back : all right ; 
Butter I warrants he prime, an' I warrants the 

heggs be as well, 
Hafe a pint o' milk runs out when ya breaks 

the shell. 

II. 

Sit thysen down fur a bit: hev a glass o' cow- 
slip wine! 

I liked the owd Squire an' 'is gells as thaw 
they was gells o' mine. 

Fur then we was all es one, the Squire an' 'is 
darters an' me. 

Hall but Miss Annie, the heldest, I niver not 
took to she: 

But Nelly, the last of the cletch,t I liked 'er 
the fust on 'em all. 

Fur hoffens we talkt o' my darter es died o* 
the fever at fall: 

*See note to "Northern Cobbler." 
f A brood of chickens. 



220 THE VILLAGE WIFE. 

An' I thowt 'twur the will o' the Lord, but 

Miss Annie she said it wur draains, 
Fur she hedn't naw coomfut in 'er, an' arn'd 

naw thanks fur 'er paains. 
Eh! thebbe all wi' the Lord my childer, I han't 

gotten none ! 
Sa new Squire's coom'd wi' 'is taail in 'is 'and, 

an' owd Squire's gone. 

III. 

Fur 'staate be i' taail, my lass: tha dosn' knaw 

what that be? 
But I knaws the law, I does, for the lawyer ha 

towd it me. 
''When theer's naw 'ead to a 'Ouse by the 

fault o' that ere maale — 
The gells they counts fur nowt, and the next 

un he taakes the taail. " 



IV. 

What be the next un like? can tha tell ony 
harm on 'im lass? — 

Naay sit down — naw 'urry — sa cowd! — hev 
another glass! 

Straange an' cowd furthe time! we may hap- 
pen a fall o' snaw — 

Not es I cares fur to hear ony harm, but I 
likes to knaw. 

An' I 'oaps es 'e beant booklarn'd: but 'e 
does not coom fro' the shere ; 

We'd anew o' that wi' the Squire, an' we 
haates booklarnin' ere. 



THE VILLAGE WIFE. 221 



Fur Squire wur a Varsity scholard, an' niver 

lookt arter the land — 
Whoats or turmuts or taates — 'e 'ed hallus a 

booak i' 'is 'and, 
Hallus aloan wi' 'is booaks, thaw nigh upo' 

seventy year. 
An' books, what's books? thou knaws thebbe 

neyther 'ere nor theer. 

VI. 

An' the gells, they hedn't naw taails, an' the 

laywer he towd it me 
That 'is taail were soa tied up es he couldn't 

cut down a tree ! 
*'Drat the trees," says I, to be sewer I haates 

'em, my lass. 
Fur we puts the muck o' the land an' they 

sucks the muck fro' the grass. 

VII. 

An' Squire wur hallus a-smilin', an' gied to 

the tramps goin' by — 
An' all o' the wust i' the parish — wi' hoffens a 

drop in 'is eye. 
An' ivry darter o' Squire's hed her awn ridin- 

erse to 'ersen. 
An' they rampaged about wi' their grooms, 

an' was 'untin' arter the men. 
An' hallus a-dallackt* an' dizen'd out, an' a- 

buyin' new cloathes, 

*Overdrest in gay colors. 



222 THE VILLAGE WIFE. 

While 'e sit like a graat glimmer-gowk* wi' 'is 

glasses athurt 'is noase, 
An' 'is noaso sa grufted wi' snuff es it couldn't 

be scroob'd awaay, 
Fur atween 'is readin' an' writin' 'e snifft up a 

box in a daay, 
An' *e niver runn'd arter the fox, nor arter the 

birds wi' 'is gun, 
An' *e niver not shot one 'are, but 'e leaved it 

to Charlie 'is son, 
An' 'e niver not fish'd 'is awn ponds, but 

Charlie 'e cotch'd the pike, 
For 'e warn't not burn to the land, an' 'e didn't 

take kind to it like ; 
But I aears es 'e'd gie fur a howryf owd book 

thutty pound an' moor, 
An' 'e'd wrote an owd book, his awn sen, sa I 

knaw'd es 'e'd coom to be poor; 
An* *e gied — I be fear'd fur to tell tha 'ow 

much — fur an owd scratted stoan. 
An' 'e digg'd up a loomp i' the land an' 'e got 

a brown pot an' a boan. 
An' 'e bowt owd money, es wouldn't goa, wi 

good dowd o' the Queen, 
An' 'e bowt little statutes all-naakt an' which 

was a shaame to be seen ; 
But 'e niver lookt ower a bill, nor 'e niver not 

seed to owt, 
An' 'e niver knawd nowt but books, an' 

books, as thou knaws, beant nowt. 

*Owl. fFilthy. 



THE VILLAGE WIFE. 223 

VIII. 

But owd Squire's laady es long es she lived she 

kep 'em all clear, 
Thaw es long es she lived I niver had none of 

'er darters 'ere; 
But arter she died we was all es one, the 

childer an' me. 
An' sarvints runn'd in an' out, an' offens we 

hed 'em to tea. 
Lawk! 'ow I laugh'd when the lasses 'ud talk 

o' their Missis's waays, 
An' the Missis talk'd o' the lasses. — I'll tell 

tha some o' these daays. 
Hoanly Miss Annie were saw stuck oop, like 

'er mother afoor — 
'Er an' 'er blessed darter — they niver derken'd 

my door. 

IX. 

An' Squire 'e smiled an* 'e smiled till 'e'd 

gotten afright at last, 
An' 'e calls fur 'is son, fur the 'turney's letters 

they foller'd sa fast; 
But Squire wur afear'd o' 'is son, an* 'e says to 

'im, meek as a mouse, 
"Lad, thou mun cut off thy taail, or the gells 

'uU goa to the *Ouse, 
Fur I finds es I be that i' debt, es I oaps es 

thou'll 'elp me a bit. 
An' if thou'll 'gree to cut off thy taail I may 

saave mysen yit. " 

X. 

But Charlie 'e sets back 'is ears, an' 'e swears, 
an' 'e says to 'im "Noa. 



224 THE VILLAGE WIFE. 

I've gotten the 'staate by the taail an' be 

dang'd if I iver let goa! 
Coom! coom! feyther, " 'e says, "why shouldn't 

thy boooks be sowd? 
I hears es soom 'o thy boooks mebbe worth 

their weight i' gowd." 

XI. 

Heaps an heaps o' boooks, I ha' see'd 'em, 

belong'd to the Sqnire, 
But the lasses 'ed teard out leaves i' the middle 

to kindle the fire ; 
Sa moast on 'is owd big boooks fetch 'd nigh to 

nowt at the saale. 
And Squire were at Charlie agean to git 'im to 

cut off 'is taail. 

XII. 

Ya wouldn't find Charlie's likes— 'e were that 

outdacious at 'oam, 
Not thaw ya went fur to raake out Hell wi' a 

small-tooth coamb — 
Droonk wi' the Quoloty's wine, an' droonk wi' 

the farmer's aale. 
Mad wi' the lasses an' all — an' 'e wouldn't cut 

off the taail. 

XIII. 

Thou's coom'd oop by the beck; and a thurn 

be a-grawin' theer, 
I niver ha seed it sa white wi' the Maay es I 

see'd it to-year — 
Theerabouts Charlie joompt — and it gied me a 

scare tother night, 



THE VILLAGE WIFE. 225 

Fur I thowt it wur Charlie's ghoast i' the derk, 

fur it loookt sa white. 
''Billy," says 'e, *'hev ajoomp!" — thaw the 

banks o' the beck be sa high, 
Fur he ca'd 'is 'erse Billy-rough-un, thaw 

niver a hair wur awry; 
But Billy fell bakkuds o* Charlie, an' Charlie 

'e brok 'is neck, 
Sa theer wur a hend o' the taail, fur 'e lost 'is 

taail i' the beck. 

XIV. 

Sa 'is taal wur lost an' is boooks wur gone an* 

'is boy wur dead, 
An' Squire 'e smiled an' 'e smiled, but 'e niver 

not lift oop 'is 'ead 
Hallus a soft un Squire! an' 'e smiled, fur *e 

hedn't naw friend, 
Sa feyther an' son was buried togither, an' this 

wur the hend. 

XV. 

An' Parson as hesn't the call, nor the mooney> 

but hes the pride, 
'E reads of a sewer an' sartan 'oap o' the tother 

side ; 
But I beant that sewer es the Lord, howsiver 

they praay'd an' praay'd, 
Lets them inter 'eaven easy es leaves their 

debts to be paaid. 
Siver the mou'ds rattled down upo' poor owd 

vSquire i' the wood. 
An' I cried along wi' the gells, fur they v/eant 

niver coom to naw good. 

15 In Memoriam 



226 THE VILLAGE WIFE. 

XVI. 

Fur Molly the long iin she walkt awaay wi* a 

hofficer lad, 
An* nawbody 'eard on 'ersin, sac' coorse she 

be gone to the bad! 
An* Lucywur laame o' one leg, sweet'arts she 

niver 'ed none — 
Straange an' unheppen* Miss Lucy! we 

naamed her "Dot an' gaw one!" 
An' Hetty wur weak i' the hattics, wi'out ony 

harm i' the legs, 
An' the fever 'ed baaked Jinny's 'ead as bald 

as one o' them heggs. 
An' Nelly wur up fro' the craadle as big i' the 

mouth as a cow, 
An' saw she mun hammergrate,f lass, or she 

weant git a maate onyhow ! 
An' es for Miss Annie es call'd me afoor my 

awn foalks to my faace 
*'A hignorant village wife as 'ud hev to be 

larn'd her awn plaace," 
Hes fur Miss Hannie, the heldest, hes now be 

a-grawin' so howd, 
I knaws that mooch o' shea, es it beant not fit 

to be towd ! 

XVII. 

Sa I didn't not taake it kindly ov owd Miss 

Annie to saay 
Es I should be talkin agean *em, es soon es 

they went awaay, 
Fur, lawks! 'ow I cried v/hen they went, an* 

our Nelly she gied me 'er 'and, 

*Ungainly, awkward. fEmigrate. 



THE VILLAGE WIFE. 1:27 

Fur I'd ha done owt for the Squire an' 'is gells 

es belong'd to the land; 
Boooks, es I said afoor, thebbe neyther 'ere 

nor theer! 
But I sarved 'em wi' butter an' heggs fur hup- 

puds o' twenty year. 

XVIII. 

An they hallus paaid what I hax'd, sa I hallus 

deal'd wi the Hall, 
An' they knaw'd what butter wur, an' they 

knaw'd what a hegg wur an' all; 
Hugger-mugger they lived, but they wasn't 

that easy to please, 
Till I gied 'em Hinjian curn, an' they laaid 

big heggs es tha seeas; 
An' I niver puts saame* i' m.y butter, they 

does it at Willis's farm, 
Taaste another drop o' the wine — tweant do 

tha naw harm. 

XIX. 

Sa new Squire's coom'd wi' 'is tauil in 'is 'and, 
an' owd Squire's gone; 

I heard 'im a roomlin' by, but arter my night- 
cap wur on ; 

Sa I han't clapt eyes on 'im yit, fur he coom'd 
last night sa laate — 

Pluksh!!!f the hens i' the peas! why didn't tha 
hesp the gaate? 

*Lard. 

f A cry accompanied by a clapping of hands to scare 
trespassing fowls. 



228 IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 



IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 

EMMIE. 



Our doctor had call'd in another, I never had 

seen him before, 
But he sent a chill to my heart when I saw him 

come in at the door. 
Fresh from the surgery-schools of France and 

of other lands — 
Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merci- 
less hands! 
Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but they 

said too of him 
He was happier usging the knife than in trying 

to save the limb. 
And that I can well believe, for he look'd so 

coarse and so red, 
I could think he was one of those who would 

break their jests on the dead. 
And mangled the living dog that had loved him 

and fawn'd at his knee — 
Drench'd with the hellish oorali — that ever 

such things should be ! 

II. 

Here was a boy — I am sure that some of our 
children would die 



IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 229 

But for the voice of Love, and the smile, and 

the comforting eye — 
Here was a boy in the ward, every bone seem'd 

out of its place — 
Caught in a mill and crush 'd — it was all but a 

hopeless case : 
And he handled him gently enough; but his 

voice and his face were not kind. 
And it was but a hopeless case, he had seen it 

and made up his mind, 
And he said to me roughly "The lad will need 

little more of your care. ' ' 
"All the more need," I told him, "to seek the 

Lord Jesus in prayer: 
They are all his children here, and I pray for 

them all as my own:" 
But he turn'd to me, "Ay, good woman, can 

prayer set a broken bone?" 
Then he mutter'd half to himself, but I know 

that I heard him say 
"All very well — but the good Lord Jesus has 

had his day." 

III. 

Had? has it come? It has only dawn'd. It 

will come by and by. 
O how could I vServe in the wards if the hope of 

the world were a lie? 
How could I bear with the sights and the 

loathsome smells of disease 
But that He said "Ye do it to me, when ye do 

it to these"? 



230 IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 

IV. 

So he went. And we past to this ward where 

the younger children are laid: 
Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling, our 

meek little maid; 
Empty you see just now! We have lost her 

who loved her so much — 
Patient of pain tho' as quick as a sensitive 

plant to the touch ; 
Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often moved 

me to tears, 
Hers was the gratefullest heart I have found 

in a child of her years — 
Nay you remember our Emmie; you used to 

send her the flowers; 
How she would smile at 'em, play with 'em, 

talk to 'em hours after hours! 
They that can wander at will where the works 

of the Lord are reveal' d 
Little guess what joy can be got from a cow- 
slip out of the field; 
Flowers to these "spirits in prison" are all 

they can know of the spring. 
They freshen and sweeten the wards like the 

waft of an Angel's wing; 
And she lay with a flower in one hand and her 

thin hands crost on her breast — 
Wan, but as pretty as heart can desire, and we 

thought her at rest. 
Quietly sleeping — so quiet, our doctor said 

"Poor little dear, 
Nurse, I must do it to-morrow; she'll never 

live throuq-h it, I fear." 



IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 231 



Y. 

I walked with our kindly old doctor as far as 

the head of the stair, 
Then I return'd to the ward; the child didn't 

see I was there. 

YI. 

Never since I was nurse, had I been so grieved 

and so vext ! 
Emmie had heard him. Softly she call'd from 

her cot to the next, 
**He says I shall never live thro' it, O Annie, 

what shall I do?" 
Annie consider'd. '*If I," said the wise little 

Annie, **was you, 
I should cry to the dear Lord Jesus to help me, 

for Emmie, you see, 
It's all in the picture there: 'Little children 

should come to me.' " 
(Meaning the print that you gave us, I find 

that it always can please 
Our children, the dear Lord Jesus with children 

about his knees.) 
*'Yes, and I will," said Emmie, "but then if I 

call to the Lord, 
How should he know that it's me? such a lot 

of beds in the ward!" 
That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she con- 
sider'd and said: 
*' Emmie, you put our your arms, and 5^ou 

leave 'em outside on the bed — 
The Lord has so much to see to! but, Emmie, 

you tell it him plain. 



232 IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 

It's the little girl with her arms lying out on 
the counterpane." 

VII. 

I had sat three nights by the child — I could 

not watch her for four — 
My brain had begun to reel — I felt I could do 

it no more. 
That was my sleeping-night, but I thought 

that it would never pass. 
There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of 

hail on the glass, 
And there was a phantom cry that I heard as 

I tost about. 
The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm 

and the darkness without; 
My sleep was broken besides with dreams of 

the dreadful knife 
And fears for our delicate Emmie who scarce 

would escape with her life; 
Then in the gray of the morning it seem'd she 

stood by me and smiled. 
And the doctor came at his hour, and we went 

to see to the child. 

VIII. 

He had brought his ghastly tools: we believed 

her asleep again — 
Her dear, long, lean little arms lying out on 

the counterpane ; 
Say that His day is done! Ah, why should we 

care what they say? 
The Lord of the children had heard her, and 

Emmie had past away. 



DEDICATORY POEM. 233 



DEDICATORY POEM TO THE PRINCESS 
ALICE. 

Dead Princess, living Power, if that, which 

lived 
True life, live on — and if the fatal kiss, 
Born of true life and love, divorce thee not 
From earthly love and life — if what we call 
The spirit flash not all at once from out 
This shadow into Substance — then perhaps 
The mellow'd murmur of the people's praise 
From thine own State, and all our breadth of 

realm, 
Where Love and Longing dress thy deeds in 

light. 
Ascends to thee; and this March morn that 

sees 
Thy soldier-brother's bridal orange-bloom 
Break thro' the yews and cypress of thy grave, 
And thine Imperial mother smile again, 
May send one ray to thee ! and who can tell — 
Thou — England's England-loving daughter — 

thou 
Dying so English thou wouldst have her flag 
Borne on thy coffin — where is he can swear 
But that some broken gleam from our poor 

earth 
May touch thee, while remembering thee, I lay 
At thy pale feet this ballad of the deeds 
Of England, and her banner in the East^ 

16 In Memoriam 



234 THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 



THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 



Banner of England, not for a season, O banner 

of Britain, hast thou 
Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the 

battle-cry! 
Never with mightier glory than when we had 

rear'd thee on high 
Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly siege 

of Lucknow — 
Shot thro' the staff or the halyard, but ever we 

raised thee anew, 
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of 

England blew. 



Frail were the works that defended the hold 
that we held with our lives — 

Women and children among us, God help 
them, our children and wives! 

Hold it we might — and for fifteen days or for 
twenty at most. 

*' Never surrender, I charge you, but every 
man die at his post!" 

Voice of the dead whom we loved, our Law- 
rence the best of the brave : 

Cold were his brows when we kissed him — we 
laid him that nieht in his erave. 



THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 235 

*'Every man die at his posti" and there hail'd 

on our houses and halls 
Death from their rifle-bullets, and death from 

their cannon-balls, 
Death in our innermost chamber, and death at 

our slight barricade, 
Death while we stood with the musket, and 

death while we stoopt to the spade, 
Death to the dying, and wounds to the 

wounded, for often there fell, 
Striking the hospital wall, crashing thro' it, 

their shot and their shell. 
Death — for their spies were among us, their 

marksmen were told of our best. 
So that the brute bullet broke thro' the brain 

that could think for the rest; 
Bullets would sing by our foreheads, and bul- 
lets would rain at our feet — 
Fire from ten thousand at once of the rebels 

that girded us round — 
Death at the glimpse of a finger from over the 

breadth of a street. 
Death from the heights of the mosque and the 

palace, and death in the ground! 
Mine? yes, a mine! Countermine! down, 

down! and creep thro' the hole! 
Keep the revolver in hand ! you can hear him — 

the murderous mole! 
Quiet, ah! quiet — wait till the point of the 

pickaxe be thro' ! 
Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer 

again than before — 
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark 

pioneer is no more ; 



236 THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of 
England blew! 

III. 

Ay, but the foe sprung his mine many times, 
and it chanced on a day 

Soon as the blast of that underground thun- 
derclap echo'd away, 

Dark thro' the smoke and the sulphur like so 
many fiends in their hell — 

Cannon-shot, musket-shot, volley on volley, 
and yell upon yell — 

Fiercely on all the defenses our myriad enemy 
fell. 

What have they done? where is it? Out yon- 
der. Guard the Redan! 

Storm at the Water-gate! storm at the Bailey- 
gate! storm, audit ran 

Surging and swaying all round us, as ocean on 
every side 

Plunges and heaves at a bank that is daily 
drown 'd by the tide — 

So many thousands that if they be bold 
enough, who shall escape? 

Kill or be kill'd, live or die, they shall know 
we are soldiers and men ! 

Ready! take aim at their leaders — their masses 
are gapp'd with our grape — 

Backward they reel like the wave, like the 
wave flinging forward again, 

Flying and foil'd at the last by the handful 
they could not subdue; 

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of 
England blew. 



THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 237 

IV. 

Handful of men as we were, we were English 

in heart and in limb, 
Strong with the strength of the race to com- 
mand, to obey, to endure, 
Each of us fought as if hope for the garrison 

hung but on him ; 
Still — could we watch at all points? we were 

every day fewer and fewer. 
There was a whisper among us, but only a 

whisper that past : 
' Children and wives — if the tigers leap into 

the fold unawares — 
Every man die at his post — and the foe may 

outlive us at last — 
Better to fall by the hands that they love, than 

to fall into theirs!" 
Roar upon roar in a moment two mines by the 

enemy sprung 
Clove into perilous chasms our walls and our 

poor palisades. 
Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that 

your hand be as true! 
Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are 

your flank fusillades — 
Twice do we hurl them to earth from the lad- 
ders to which they had clung, 
Twice from the ditch where they shelter we 

drive them with hand-grenades; 
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner 

of England blew. 



238 THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW 

V. 

Then on another wild morning another wild 

earthquake out-tore 
Clean from our lines of defense ten or twelve 

good paces or more. 
Rifleman, high on the roof, hidden there from 

the light of the sun — 
One has leapt up on the beach, crying out: 

' ' Follow me, follow me ! ' ' — 
Mark him — he falls! then another, and him 

too, and down goes he. 
Had they been bold enough then, who can tell 

but the traitors had won? 
Boardings and rafters and doors — an embras- 
ure ! make way for the gun ! 
Now double-charge it with grape! It is 

charged and we fire, and they run. 
Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark 

face have his due! 
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought 

with us, faithful and few. 
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove 

them, and smote them, and slew. 
That ever upon the topmost roof our banner in 

India blew. 



Men will forget what we suffer and not what 

we do. We can fight! 
But to be soldier all day and be sentinel all 

thro' the night — 
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their 

lying alarms, 



THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 239 

Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shout- 
ings and soundings to arms, 

Ever the labor of fifty that had to be done by 
five, 

Ever the marvel among us that one should be 
left alive, 

Ever the day with its traitorous death from the 
loopholes around, 

Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be 
laid in the ground, 

Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of 
cataract skies. 

Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite tor- 
ment of flies, 

Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over 
an English field. 

Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that 
would not be heal'd, 

Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful-piti- 
less knife, — 

Torture and trouble in vain, — for it never 
could save us a life. 

Valor of delicate women who tended the hos- 
pital bed. 

Horror of women in travail among the dying 
and dead. 

Grief for our perishing children, and never a 
moment for grief. 

Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes 
of relief, 

Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butcher' d for 
all that we knew — 

Then day and night, day and night, coming 
down on the still-shatter' d walls 



240 THE DEFENSE OF LUCKNOW. 

Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of 

cannon-balls — 
But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of 

England blew. 

VII. 

Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was 
told by the scout, 

Outram and Havelock breaking their way- 
through the fell mutineers? 

Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again 
in our ears! 

All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant 
shout, 

Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer with 
conquering cheers. 

Sick from the hospital echo them, women and 
children come out, 

Blessing the wholesome white faces of Have- 
lock's good fusileers, 

Kissing the war-harden'd hand of the High- 
lander wet with their tears! 

Dance to the pibroch! — saved! — we are saved! 
— is it you? is it you? 

Saved by the valor of Havelock, saved by the 
blessing of Heaven! 

"Hold it for fifteen days!" we have held it for 
eighty-seven! 

And ever aloft on the palace roof the old ban- 
ner of England blew. 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 241 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, LORD COBHAM. 

(in wales.) 

My friend should meet me somewhere here- 
about 
To take me to that hiding in the hills. 

I have bruke their cage, no gilded one, I 

trow — 
I read no more the prisoner's mute wail 
Scribbled or carved upon the pitiless stone; 
I find hard rocks, hard life, hard cheer, or 

none, 
For I am emptier than a friar's brains 
But God' is with me in this wilderness, 
These wet black passes and foam-churning 

chasms — 
And God's free air, and hope of better things. 

I would I knew their speech; not now to 
glean, 
Not now — I hope to do it— some scatter'd ears. 
Some ears for Christ in this wild field of 

Wales — 
But, bread, merely for bread. This tongue 

that wagg'd 
They said with such heretical arrogance 
Against the proud archbishop Arundel — 

16 



242 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 

So much God's cause was fluent in it — is here 

But as a Latin Bible to the crowd; 

*'Bara!" — what use? The Shepherd, when I 

speak, 
Vailing a sudden eyelid with his hard 
*'Dim Saesneg" passes, wroth at things of old — 
No fault of mine. Had he God's word in 

Welsh 
He might be kindlier; happily come the day! 

Not least art thou, thou little Bethlehem 
In Judah, for in thee the Lord was born; 
Nor thou in Britain, little Lutterworth, 
Least, for in thee the word was born again. " 

Heaven-sweet Evangel, ever-living word, 
Who whilome spakest to the South in Greek 
About the soft Mediterranean shores, 
And then in Latin to the Latin crowd. 
As good need was — thou hast come to talk our 

isle 
Hereafter thou, fulfilling Pentecost, 
Must learn to use the tongues of all the world. 
Yet art thou thine own witness that thou 

bringest 
Not peace, a sword, a fire. 

What did he say, 
My frighted Wicliff-preacher whom I crost 
In flying hither? that one night a crowd 
Throng'd the waste field about the city gates: 
The king was on them suddenly with a host. 
Why there? they came to hear their preacher. 
Then 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 243 

Some cried on Cobham, on the good Lord Cob- 
ham; 
Ay, for they love me ! but the king — nor voice 
Nor finger raised against him — took and 

hang'd, 
Took, hang'd and burnt — how many — thirty- 
nine — 
Caird it rebellion — hang'd, poor friends, as 

rebels 
And burn'd alive as heretics! for your Priest 
Labels — to take the king along with him — 
All heresy, treason ; but to call men traitors 
May make men traitors. 

Rose of Lancaster, 
Red in thy birth, redder with household war, 
Now reddest with the blood of holy men. 
Redder to be, red rose of Lancaster — 
If somewhere in the North, as Rumor sang 
Fluttering the hawks of this crov/n- lusting line 
B}'' firth and loch thy silver sister grow,* 
That were my rose, there my allegiance due. 
Self-starved, they say — nay, murder'd doubt- 
less dead. 
So to this king I cleaved: my friend was he, 
Once my fast friend: I would have given my 

life 
To help his own from scathe, a thousand lives 
To save his soul. He might have come to learn 
Our Wiclitf' s learning; but the vv^orldly Priests 
Who fear the king's hard common-sense should 
find 

*Richard II, 



244 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 

What rotten piles uphold their mason-work, 

Urge him to foreign war. O had he will'd 

I might have stricken a lusty stroke for him, 

But he would not; far liever led my friend 

Back to the pure and universal church, 

But he would not : whether that heirless flaw 

In his throne's title make him feel so frail, 

He leans on Antichrist; or that his mind. 

So quick, so capable in soldiership, 

In matters of the faith, alas the while! 

More worth than all the kingdoms of this 

world. 
Runs in the rut, a coward to the Priest. 

Burnt — good Sir Roger Acton, my dear 

friend! 
Burnt, too, my faithful preacher, Beverley! 
Lord give thou power to thy two witnesses! 
Lest the false faith make merry over them! 
Two — nay but thirty-nine have risen and stand, 
Dark with the smoke of human sacrifice. 
Before thy light, and cry continually — 
Cry — against whom? 

Him, who should bear the sword 
Of Justice — what! the kingly, kindly boy; 
Who took the world so easily heretofore. 
My boon companion, tavern-fellow — him 
Who gibed and japed — in many a merry tale 
That shook our sides — at Pardoners, Summon- 

ers. 
Friars, absolution-sellers, monkeries 
And nunneries, when the wild hour and the 

wine 
Had set the wits aflame. 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 245 

Harry of Monmouth, 
Or Amu rath of the East? 

Better to sink 
Thy fleurs-de-l3^s in slime again, and fling 
Thy royalty back into the riotous fits 
Of wine and harlotry — thy shame, and mine, 
Thy comrade — than to persecute the Lord, 
And play the Saul that never will be Paul. 

Burnt, burnt! and while this mitred Arundel 
Dooms our unlicensed preacher to the flame, 
The mitre-sanction 'd harlot draws his clerks 
Into the suburb — their hard celibacy. 
Sworn to be veriest ice of pureness, molten 
Into adulterous living, or such crimes 
As holy Paul — a shame to speak of them — 
Among the heathen — 

Sanctuary granted 
To bandit, thief, assassin — yea to him 
Who hacks his mother's throat — denied to him, 
Who finds the Savior in his mother tongue. 
The Gospel, the Priest's pearl, flung down to 

swine — 
The swine, lay-mfcn, lay- women, who will come, 
God willing, to outlearn the filthy friar. 
Ah rather, Lord, than that thy Gospel, meant 
To course and range thro' all the world, should 

be 
Tether'd to these dead pillars of the Church — 
Feather than so, if thou wilt have it so. 
Burst vein, snap sinew, and crack heart, and life 
Pass in the fire of Babylon ! but how long, 
O Lord, how long! 



246 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 

My friend should meet me here. 
Here is the copse, the fountain and — a Cross! 
To thee, dead wood, I bow not head nor knees. 
Rather to thee, green boscage, work of God, 
Black holly, and white-flower'd wayfaring-tree ! 
Rather to thee, thou living water, drawn 
By this good Wicliff mountain down from 

heaven. 
And speaking clearl)^ in thy native tongue — 
No Latin — He that thirsteth, come and drink! 



Eh! how I anger'd Arundel asking me 
To worship Holy Cross! I spread mine arms, 
God's work, I said, a cross of flesh and blood 
And holier. That Vvras heresy. (My good friend 
By this time should be with me.) "Images?" 
"Bury them as God's truer images 
Are daily buried." "Heresy. — Penance?" 

"Fast, 
Hairshirt and scourge — nay, let a man repent, 
Do penance in his heart, God hears him." 

"Heresy — 
Not shriven, not saved?" "What profits an ill 

Priest 
Between me and my God? I would not spurn 
Good counsel of good friends, but shrive myself 
No, not to an Apostle. " "Heresy." 
(My friend is long in coming.) "Pilgrimages?" 
"Drink, bagpipes, reveling, devil's-dances^ 

vice. 
The poor man's money gone to fat the friar. 
Who reads of begging saints in Scripture?"" 

"Heresy" — 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 247 

(Hath he been here — not found me — gone 

again? 
Have I mislearnt our place of meeting?) 

"Bread — 
Bread left after the blessing?" how they stared. 
That was their main test-question — glared at 

me! 
*'He veil'd Himself in flesh, and now He veils 
His flesh in bread, body and bread together." 
Then rose the howl of all the cassock'd wolves, 
'* No bread, no bread. God's body!" Arch- 
bishop, Bishop, 
Priors, Canons, bellringers. Parish-clerks — 
"No bread, no bread!" — "Authority of the 

Church, 
Power of the keys!" — Then I, God help me, I 
So mock'd; so spurn'd, so baited two whole 

days — 
I lost myself and fell from evenness, 
And rail'd at all the Popes, that ever since 
Sylvester shed the venom of world-wealth 
Into the church, had only prov'n themselves 
Poisoners, murderers. Well — God pardon all — 
Me, then, and all the world — yea, that proud 

Priest, 
That mock-meek mouth of utter Antichrist, 
That traitor to King Richard and the truth, 
"Who rose and doom'd me to the fire. 

Amen! 
Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of life 
Be by me in my death. 

Those three ! the fourth 
Was like the Son of God ! Not burnt were they. 
On them the smell of burning had not past, 



248 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 

That was a miracle to convert the king. 

These Pharisees, this Caiaphas- Arundel 

What miracle could turn? He here again, 

He thwarting their traditions of Himself, 

He would be found a heretic to Himself, 

And doom'd to burn alive. 

So, caught, I burn. 

Burn? heathen men have borne as much as 
this, 

For freedom, or the sake of those they loved, 

Or some less cause, some cause far less than 
mine; 

For every other cause is less than mine. 

The moth will singe her wings, and singed re- 
turn, 

Her love of light quenching her fear of pain — 

How now, my soul, we do not heed the fire? 

Faint-hearted? tut! — faint-stomach'd! faint as I 
am, 

God willing, I will burn for Him. 

Who comes? 

A thousand marks are set upon my head. 

Friend? — foe, perhaps — a tussle for it then' 

Nay, but my friend. Thou art so well dis- 
guised, 

I knew thee not. Hast thou brought bread 
with thee? 

I have not broken bread for fifty hours. 

None? I am damn'd already by the Priest 

For holding there was bread where bread was 
none — 

No bread. My friends await me yonder? Yes. 

Lead on then. Up the mountain? Is it far? 



SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE. 249 

Not far. Climb first and reach me down thy 

hand. 
I am not like to die for lack of bread, 
For I must live to testify by fire.* 

*He was burnt on Christmas Day, 141 7. 



250 COLUMBUS. 



COLUMBUS. 

Chains, my good lord: in your raised brows I 

read 
Some wonder at our chamber ornaments. 
We brought this iron from our isles of gold. 

Does the king know you deign to visit him 
Whom once he rose from off his throne to greet 
Before his people, like his brother king? 
I saw your face that morning in the crowd. 

At Barcelona — tho' you were not then 
So bearded. Yes. The city deck'd herself 
To meet me, roar'd my name ; the king, the 

queen 
Bade me be seated, speak, and tell them all 
The story of my voyage, and while I spoke 
The crowd's roar fell as at the ''Peace, be 

still!" 
And when I ceased to speak, the king, the 

queen. 
Sank from their thrones, and melted into tears, 
And knelt, and lifted hand and heart and voice 
In praise to God who led me thro' the waste. 
And then the great "Laudamus" rose to 

heaven. 

Chains for the Admiral of the Ocean! chains 
For him w^ho gave a new heaven, a new earth, 



COLUMBUS. 251 

As holy John had prophesied of me 
Gave glory and more empire to the kings 
Of Spain than all their battles! chains for him 
Who push'd his prows into the setting sun, 
And made West East, and sail'd the Dragon's 

mouth, 
And saw the rivers roll from Paradise! 

Chains! we are Admirals of the Ocean, we, 
We and our sons for ever. Ferdinand 
Hath sigu'd it and our Holy Catholic queen — 
Of the Ocean — of the Indies — Admirals we — 
Our title, ^yhich we never mean to yield, ' 
Our guerdon not alone for what we did, 
But our amends for all we might have done — 
The vast occasion of our stronger life — 
Eighteen long years of waste, seven in your 

Spain, 
Lost, showing courts and kings a truth the babe 
Will suck in with his milk hereafter — earth 
A sphere. 

Were you at Salamanca? No, 
We fronted there the learning of all Spain, 
All their cosmogonies, their astronomies: 
Guess-work they guess'd it, but the golden 

guess 
Is morning star to the full round of truth. 
No guess-work ! I was certain of my goal ; 
Some thought it heresy, but that would not 

hold. 
King David call'd the heavens a hide, a tent 
Spread over earth, and so this earth was flat: 
Some cited old Lactantius: could it be 



252 COLUMBUS 

That trees grew downward, rain fell upward, 

men 
Walk'd like the fly on ceilings? and besides, 
The great Augustine wrote that none could 

breathe 
Within the zone of heat; so might there be 
Two Adams, two mankinds, and that was clean 
Against God's word: thus was I beaten back. 
And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church, 
And thought to turn my face from Spain, 

appeal 
Once more to France or England; but our 

Queen 
Recall'd me, for at last their Highnesses 
Were half-assured this earth misfht be a 



sphere. 



t>' 



All glory to the all-blessed Trinity, 
All glory to the mother of our Lord, 
And Holy Church, from whom I never swerved 
Not even by one hair's breadth of heresy, 
I have accomplish'd what I came to do. 

Not yet — not all — last night a dream — I sail'd 
On my first voyage, harass'd by the frights 
Of my first crew, their curses and their groans. 
The great flame-banner borne by Teneriffe, 
The compass, like an old friend false at last 
In our most need, appall'd them, and the wind 
Still westward, and the weedy seas — at length 
The landbird, and the branch with berries on it, 
The carven staff — and last the light 
On Guanahani! but I changed the name; 
San Salvador I call'd it; and the light 



COLUMBUS. 253 

Grew as I gazed, and brought out a broad sky 
Of dawning over — not those alien palms, 
The marvel of that fair new nature — not 
That Indian isle, but our most ancient East 
Moriah with Jerusalem ; and I saw 
The glory of the Lord flash up, and beat 
Thro' all the homely town from jasper, 

sapphire, 
Chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardins, 
Chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, 
Jacynth, and amethyst — and those twelve 

gates, 
Pearl — and I woke, and thought — death — I 

shall die — 
I am written in the Lamb's own Book of Life 
To walk within the glory of the Lord 
Sunless and moonless, utter light — but no! 
The Lord had sent this bright, strange dream 

to me 
To mind me of the secret vov/ I made 
When Spain was waging war against the 

Moor — 
I strove myself with Spain against the Moor. 
There came two voices from the Sepulcher, 
Two friars crying that if Spain should oust 
The Moslem from her limit, he, the fierce 
Soldan of Egypt, would break down and raze 
The blessed tomb of Christ; whereon I vow'd 
That, if our Princes harken'd to my prayer. 
Whatever wealth I brought from that new 

world 
Should, in this old, be consecrate to lead 
A new crusade against the Saracen, 
And free the Ploly Sepulcher from thrall. 



254 COLUMBUS. 

Gold? I had brought your Princes gold 

enough 
If left alone! Being but a Genovese, 
I am handled worse than had I been a Moor, 
And breach'd the belting wall of Cambalu, 
And given the Great Khan's palaces to the 

Moor, 
Or clutch 'd the sacred crown of Prestor John, 
And cast it to the Moor: but had I brought 
From Solomon's now-recover'd Ophir all 
The gold that Solomon's navies carried home, 
Would that have gilded me? Blue blood of 

Spain 
Tho' quartering your own royal arms of Spain, 
I have not: blue blood and black blood of 

Spain, 
The noble and the convict of Castile, 
Howl'd me from Hispaniola; for you know 
The flies at home, that ever swarm about 
And cloud the highest heads, and murmur 

down 
Truth in the distance — these outbuzz'd me so 
That even our prudent king, our righteous 

queen — 
I pray'd them being so calumniated 
They would commission one of weight and 

worth 
To judge between my slander'd self and me — 
Fonseca my main enemy at their court. 
They sent me out his tool, Bovadilla, one 
As ignorant and impolitic as a beast — 
Blockish irreverence, brainless greed — who 

sack'd 
My dwelling, seized upon my papers, loosed 



COLUMBUS. 255 

My captives, feed the rebels of the crown, 
Sold the crown-farms for all but nothing, gave 
All but free leave for all to work the mines, 
Drove me and my good brothers home in 

chains, 
And gathering ruthless gold — a single piece 
Weigh 'd nigh four thousand Castillanos — so 
They tell me — weigh'd him down into the 

abysm — 
The hurricane of the latitude on him fell, 
The seas of our discovering over-roll 
Him and his gold ; the frailer caravel, 
With what was mine, came happily to the 

shore. 
There was a glimmering of God's hand. 

And God 
Hath more than glimmer'd on me. O my lord, 
I swear to you I heard his voice between 
The thunders in the black Veragua nights, 
"O soul of little faith, slow to believe! 
Have I not been about thee from thy birth? 
Given thee the keys of the great Ocean-sea? 
Set thee in light till time shall be no more? 
Is it I who have deceived thee or the world? 
Endure! thou hast done so well for men, that 

men 
Cry out against thee : was it otherwise 
With mine own Son?" 

And more than once in days 
Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning 

hope 
Sank all but out of sight, I heard his voice, 



256 COLUMBUS. 

"Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand, 
Fear not." And I shall hear his voice again — 
I know that he has led me all my life. 
I am not yet too old to work his will — 
His voice again. 

Still for all that, my lord, 
I lying here bedridden and alone,. 
Cast off, put by, scouted by court and king — 
The first discoverer starves — his followers, all 
Flower into fortune — our world's way — and I 
Without a roof that I can call mine own, 
With scarce a coin to buy a meal withal, 
And seeing what a door for scoundrel scum 
I open'd to the West, thro' which the lust, 
Villainy, violence, avarice, of your Spain 
Pour'd in on all those happy naked isles — 
Their kindly native princes slain or slaved, 
Their wives and children Spanish concubines. 
Their innocent hospitalities quench'd in blood. 
Some dead of hunger, some beneath the 

scourge. 
Some over-labor'd, some b)^ their own liands, — 
Yea, the dear mothers, crazing Nature, kill 
Their babies at the breast for hate of Spain — 
Ah God, the harmless people whom we found 
In Hispaniola's island-Paradise' 
Who took us for the very Gods from Heaven, 
And we have sent them very fiends from Hell; 
And I myself, myself not blameless, I 
Could sometimes wish I had never led the way. 

Only the ghost of our great Catholic Queen 
Smiles on me, saying, "Be thou comforted! 



COLUMBUS. 257 

This creedless people will be brought to Christ 
And own the holy governance of Rome." 

But who could dream that we, who bore the 

Cross 
Thither, were excommunicated there, 
For curbing crimes that scandalized the Cross, 
By him, the Catalonian Minorite, 
Rome's Vicar in our Indies? who believe 
These hard memorials of our truth to Spain 
Clung closer to us for a longer term 
Than any friend of ours at Court? and yet 
Pardon — too harsh, unjust. I am rack'd with 

pains. 

You see that I have hung them by my bed, 
And I will have them buried in my grave. 

Sir, in that flight of ages which are God's 
Own voice to justify the dead — perchance 
Spain once the most chivalric race on earth, 
Spain then the mightiest, wealthiest realm on 

earth. 
So made by me, may seek to unbury me. 
To lay me in some shrine of this old Spain, 
Or in that vaster Spain I leave to Spain. 
Then some one standing by my grave will say, 
''Behold the bones of Christopher Colon" — 
"Ay, but the chains, what do they mean — the 

chains?" — 
I sorrow for that kindly child of Spain 
Who then will have to answer, "These same 

chains 

17 In Memoriam 



258 COLUMBUS. 

Bound these same bones back thro' the Atlantic 

sea, 
Which heunchain'd for all the world to come. " 

O Queen of Heaven who seest the souls in 

Hell 
And purgatory, I suffer all as much 
As they do — for the moment. Stay, my son 
Is here anon : my son will speak for me 
Ablier than I can in these spasms that grind 
Bone against bone. You will not. One last 

word: 

You move about the Court, I pray you tell 
King Ferdinand who plays with me, that one, 
Whose life has been no play with him and his 
Hidalgos — shipwrecks, famines, fevers, fights. 
Mutinies, treacheries — wink'd at, and con- 
doned — 
That I am loyal to him till the death, 
And ready — tho' our Holy Catholic Queen, 
Who fain had pledged her jewels on my first 

voyage, 
Whose hope was mine to spread the Catholic 

faith. 
Who wept with me when I return'd in chains, 
Who sits beside the blessed Virgin now, 
To whom I send my prayer by night and day — 
She is gone — but you will tell the King, that I, 
Rack'd as I am with gout, and wrench 'd with 

pains 
Gain'd in the service of His Highness, yet 
Am ready to sail forth on one last voyage, 
And readier, if the King would hear, to lead 



COLUMBUS. 259 

One last crusade against the Saracen, 
And save the Holy Sepulchre from thrall. 

Going? I am old and slighted: you have 
dared 
Somewhat perhaps in coming? my poor thanks ! 
I am but an alien and a Genovese. 



260 THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE. 



THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE. 

(founded on an IRISH LEGEND. A. D. 70O, ) 



I was the chief of the race — he had stricken my 

father dead — 
But I gather'd my fellows together, I swore I 

would strike off his head. 
Each of them look'd like a king, and was noble 

in birth as in worth, 
And each of them boasted he sprang from the 

oldest race upon earth. 
Each was as brave in the fight as the bravest 

hero of song, 
And each of them liefer had died than have 

done one another a wrong. 
He lived on an isle in the ocean — we sail'd on 

a Friday morn — 
He that had slain my father the day before I 

was born. 



II. 

And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there 

on the shore was he. 
But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro' 

a boundless sea. 



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